U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory Fort Rucker, Alabama

Transcription

1 USAARL Report No Proceedings of the First Triservice Conference on Rotary-Wing Spatia Disorientation: Spatia Disorientation in the Operationa Rotary-Wing Environment Macom G. Braithwaite Shannon L. DeRoche Eduardo A. Avarez Meisa A. Reese Aircrew Heath and Performance Division Apri 1997 Approved for pubic reease, distribution unimited. U.S. Army Aeromedica Research Laboratory Fort Rucker, Aabama

2 Notice Ouaifed reauesters Quaified requesters may obtain copies from the Defense Technica Information Cameron Station, Aexandria, Virginia Orders wi be expedited if paced through the ibrarian or other person designated to request documents from DTIC. Change of address Organizations receiving reports from the U.S. Army Aeromedica Research Laboratory on automatic maiing ists shoud confirm correct address when corresponding about aboratory reports. DisDosition Destroy this document when it is no onger needed. Do not return it to the originator. Discaimer The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and shoud not be construed as an officia Department of the Army position, poicy, or decision, uness so designated by other officia documentation. Citation of trade names in this report does not constitute an offkia Department of the Army endorsement or approva of the use of such commercia items. Reviewed: JEFFREY C. RABIN LTC, MC Director, Aircrew Heath and Performance Division. Reeased for pubication: / Chairman, Scientific Review I Committee Commanding

3 Uncassified SECURY CLASSIFICATION OF THIS PAGE REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE OMB No Uncassified 1 b. RESTRICTIVE MARKINGS 2a. SECURY CLASSIFICATION AUTHORITY 3. DSRBUTON /AVAILABILY OF REPORT Approved for pubic reease, distribution 2b. DECASSFCATON I DOWNGRADING SCHEDULE unimited 4. PERFORMING ORGANZATON REPORT NUMBER(S) USAARL Report No MONITORING ORGANZATON REPORT NUMBER(S) 6a. NAME OF PERFORMING ORGANZATiON 6b. OFFICE SYMBOL (If appicabe) U.S. Army Aeromedica Research Laboratory MCMR-UAD 7a. NAME OF MONKORING ORGANZATON U.S. Army Medica Research and Materie Command 6c. ADDRESS (Cify, state, and ZIP Code) 7b. ADDRESS (City8 State. and ZIP Code) P.O. Box Fort Detrick Fort Rucker, AL Frederick, MD a. NAME OF FUNDING I SPONSORING ORGANZATON 6b. OFFICE SYMBOL (If appicabe) 9. PROCUREMENT INSTRUMENT IDENTFCATON NUMBER 6~. ADDRESS (City, State, and ZIP Code) 11. TTLE (h&de Securify Cassifkafion) 10. SOURCE OF FUNDING NUMBERS PROGRAM ELEMENT NO A PROJECT NO. 3M162787A879 TASK NO. WORK UNT ACCESSION NO. OA 177 (U) Proceedings of the First Triservice Conference on Rotary-Wing Spatia Disorientation: Spatia Disorientation in the Operationa Rotary-Wing Environment 12. PERSONAL AUTHORIS\.-, M. Braithwaite, S. Deroche, E. Avarez, M. Reese 13a. TYPE OF REPORT 13b. TME COVERED 14. Fina 16. SUPPLEMENTAL NOTATON DATE OF REPORT (Year. Month, Day) 15. PAGE COUNT 7. COSATI CODES 16. SUBJECT TERMS (Continue on reverse ~neaxsary and identify by bock number) FIELD 1 GROUP 1 SUB-GROUP Spatia disorientation, rotary-wing, triservice, 01 I 03 I 01 symposium. 13 I 17 I I 19. ABSTRACT (Continue on twene if necessary and identify by bock numbeo Severa recent studies at the U.S. Army Aeromedica Research Laboratory (USAARL) and the U.S. Army Safety Center (USASC) have highighted the significant contribution of Spatia Disorientation (SD) to heicopter accidents. In the U.S. Army the cost can be approximated at $58M and 14 ives each year. Foowing some oca training initiatives by USAARL and the U.S. Army Schoo of Aviation Medicine (USASAM), the first Triservice Symposium on Spatia Disorientation in Rotary-Wing Operations was hed from 24 September 1996 through 26 September 1996 at USASAM. This symposium sought to address three main areas: the seriousness of the SD hazard; current methods to contro the hazard; and the associated safety and risk management concerns. This report contains the proceedings of the symposium. The symposium was considered to be a success in raising the awareness of the impact of SD on rotary-wing fying operations in the aeromedica and safety communities of the services. It was cear that SD imposes a particuar hazard to rotarywing operations which differs in many respects to that experienced by fixed wing operators. There was unanimous agreement that initiatives to overcome the probem must be made. In order to maintain the impetus estabished by the symposium and secure funding 20.DSTRBUTON I AVAILABILITY OFABSTRACT ABSTRACT SECURY CLASSIFICAT ION Uncassified 22a. NAME OF RESPONSIBLE INDMDUAL DD Form 1473, JUN 86 22b. TELEPHONE (Incude Area Code) 22~. OFFICE SYMBOL (334) MCMR-UAX-SI Previous editions are obsoete. SECURITY CASSFCATON OF THIS PAGE Uncassified

4 19. Abstract, continued. for the various initiatives, the report contains a memorandum detaiing the important factors and makes recommendations for future activity in the area. Work is required in education, training, research, and equipment procurement. Contro factors are discussed and recommendations made according to whether the approach shoud be soey directed towards the U.S. Army, or on a triservice basis.

5 Tabe of contents Page Introduction......I Keynote speaker BG Thomas J. Konitzer, Commander, U.S. Army Safety Center Introduction to the symposium Revision of the physioogy of SD and Puzzing Perceptions video Session 1: The impact of spatia disorientation on rotary-wing operations....7 Introduction....7 The impact of SD on Army rotary-wing operations Introduction and methods....7 Resuts of the study Type of figh t Fight hours data Height and speed Number of crew disoriented Distraction Events Factors eading to the mishap Combat training osses Predisposing factors Mishap coding issues The nature of rotary-wing SD Potentia soutions Concusion Recommendations Impact of SD on U.S. Navy rotary-wing operations Impact of SD on U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) rotary-wing operations Introduction Mishap rates The typica SD mishap Command concern The impact of SD on U.S. Air Force (USAF) rotary-wing operations Discussion session Session 2: Training initiatives to overcome SD in rotary-wing operations Introduction Training initiatives to overcome SD in the Army Training initiatives to overcome SD in the USAF Training initiatives to overcome SD in the U.S. Navy Ground based training Ground based demonstrators

6 Tabe of contents (continued\ Fight based training Research to support SD training Training initiatives to overcome SD in the USMC Discussion session Session 3: Technoogy initiatives to assist spatia orientation in fight Session 4: Cassification of the SD mishap Introduction Cassification of the Army SD mishap Cassification of the Navy SD mishap Cassification of the USAF SD mishap Discussion session A proposed SD mishap investigation annex Discussion session Fina discussion Cosing address Appendix A List of symposium attendees..... A- 1 Appendix B Introductory remarks about speakers....b- 1 Appendix C Preprint: The British Army Air Corps in-fight SD demonstration sortie.....c- 1 Appendix D U.S. Navy SD syabus... D- Appendix E Proposed SD mishap or incident investigation annex..... E- Appendix F SD - Initiatives to overcome a significant impact on rotary-wing operations...f- 1 List of tabes 1. Conference agenda List of figures Cassification of accidents The roe of SD... 9 The comparative severity of SD and non-sd accidents....9 SD costs (monetary) iv

7 Tabe of contents (continued) Figure SD costs (ives ost) The infuence of day/night conditions in the SD and non-sd rates Percent SD accidents - day and night Percent SD accidents - night Percent SD accidents - NVG Tota accident rates A rotary-wing accident rates Day and night fight accident rates Height above the ground at the time of emergency Airspeed at the time of emergency Both crew disoriented The types of SD event - a accidents The types of SD event - night unaided The types of SD event - night aided Misjudged fight parameters Potentiay important features Sensory difficuty (1) Frequency of visua and vestibuar factors in the accident anaysis and aircrew survey Sensory difficuty (2) Safety Center categories Potentia soutions Recommendations - training Recommendations - technoogy Tite - CDR Rick Mason Organization Intensity of operations Cass A fight mishap rates Typica SD mishap SD equation (SD ORM?) Is HQMC concerned? Ground based training Termina earning objective Enabing earning objectives Aviator instruction SD demonstrators Frequency of instruction Audit of training V

8 Tabe of contents (continued) Figure Ground based training initiatives Tite - Sqn Ldr G. Maidment, RAF Rotary-wing training in the USAF Initia ground based SD training Initia SD cassroom instruction Initia SD cassroom instruction (cant) Rotary-wing training at Fort Rucker Combat crew training at Kirkand AFB Refresher training Standardization documents Advanced SD demonstrator (ASDD) ASDD motion ASDD features ASDD basic profies ASDD - Potentia rotary-wing appications Tite - Lt Co1 Jeffrey Hi Instrument refresher course (1) Instrument refresher course (2) Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (1) Instrument refresher course - objectives Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (2) Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (3) Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (4) Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (5) Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (6) Tite - CAPT Jonathon Cark Student Nava fight surgeon and student nava aerospace physioogist ground based SD training Entry eve aviator/aircrew training ground based SD training (1) Entry eve aviator/aircrew training ground based SD training (2) Initia training (student Nava aviator) ground based SD training Ground based refresher SD training (designated fight personne) Instructor training ground based SD training Initia training (student Nava aviator) fight based SD training (1) Initia training (student Nava aviator) fight based SD training (2) Instructor training fight based SD training Research initiatives to overcome SD in the U.S. Navy (1) Research initiatives to overcome SD in the U.S. Navy (2) vi

9 Tabe of contents (continued) Figure. Page Concusions Tite - CDR Rick Mason...I Ground based training SD training devices Training evauation Airborne demonstrations Tite - Bi Ercoine Major aircraft accidents SD studies SD definition Excerpt from AF FORM 711 ga, Sep USAF SD Cass A mishaps Mishaps per 100,000 fying hours Average cost of a USAF SD Cass A mishap USAF rotary-wing Cass A resuts summary vii

10 Introduction The first triservice conference on rotary-wing spatia disorientation (SD) entited Spatia Disorientation in the Operationa Rotary-Wing Environment was sponsored by the U.S. Army Schoo of Aviation Medicine (USASAM), Fort Rucker, Aabama, from 24 through 26 September Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite of the U.S. Army Aeromedica Research Laboratory (USAARL) was asked to chair the conference which was aimed at the operationa needs of the depoying fight surgeon and safety officer. The conference focused on three main areas: the seriousness of the probem of SD in rotary-wing operations, what the services are doing about the SD probem, and safety issues surrounding SD. This report records the proceedings of the conference either in the form of edited spoken text or copies of projected sides, and makes recommendations about the initiatives that shoud be taken to contro the hazard of SD. The conference agenda is at tabe 1. Detais of technica presentations appear in the foowing sections. A ist of attendees and introductory remarks about the speakers are at appendices A and B, respectivey.

11 Tabe 1. Conference agenda. Monday, 23 September 1996 Tuesday, 24 September 1996 Trave, check in to BOQ Registration, USASAM, Bdg 30 I, X Speakers meet for coordination and instruction on visua aids Onenine Remarks - LTC Toomey, Assistant Dean USASAM Kevnote Sneaker - BG Konitzer, Commander USASC Administrative Announcements - CPT Schwarz/Lt Cot Braithwaite 1 ooo Midmorning Break and sign up for activities 1030-I 145 Revision of the Phvsioioav of SD and Puzzina Percentions video LTC Braithwaite Lunch mnact of SD on Armv RW Onns - LTC Braithwaite/LTC Murdock Imnact of SD on USN RW Oons - CAPT Amond Afternoon Break Imnact of SD on USMC RW Oons - LTC Mason Imnact of on USAF RW Onns - LTC Johnson/LTC Hi Discussion 1830 Icebreaker (Officers cub)

12 Tabe 1. Conference agenda (continued). Wednesday, 25September Training Initiatives to overcome SD in the Armv - CPT Thompson/ LTC Braithwaite Training Initiatives to overcome SD in the USAF - Sqn Ldr Maidment/LTC Hi Trainina Initiatives to overcome SD in the USN - CAPT Carke Training Initiatives to overcome SD in the USMC - LTC Mason Discussion Midmorning Break Technooav Initiatives - Vibrotactie interface - Dr Raj Technoorrv Initiatives - Nove Disoav - LTC Braithwaite Technooav Initiatives - 3D audio - Dr Cheette Lunch Cassification of the Armv SD mishao - LTC Murdock Cassification of the USN/USMC SD mishao - CAPT Amond Cassification of the USAF SD mishan - Mr Ercoine Proposed SD mishao investigation aooendix - LTC Braithwaite Svndicate practice usins SD mishao investigation aooendix Afternoon Break Review resuts of syndicate work - LTC Braithwaite Fieding the aunendix FINAL DISCUSSION - LTC Braithwaite TBD - Mr Novose Thursday, 26 September I 200 Spatia Disorientation Demonstration Sortie (USAARL Heipad) 3

13 Kevnote sneaker - BG Thomas J. Konitzer. Commander, U.S. Armv Safety Center Brigadier Genera Konitzer s address is not recorded in fu as it contained sensitive materia, but some of his pertinent remarks are made beow. Eighty percent of mishaps are caused by human factors. We have got to be abe to drive that down to make an impact on our war fighting capabiity. The Chief of Staff, in a recent visit to the Safety Center, said, as the Army gets smaer, through risk management and other initiatives, we have got to ook at how we can preserve the force better. We need to estabish how many of our accidents are due to SD. The work that has been done at USAARL over the ast few years has highighted the seriousness and magnitude of this particuar probem. The average annua oss from SD is about 16 ives and $60 miion. That is unacceptabe. We have reduced our accident rate to ess than one Cass A accident per 100,000 fying hours, but we shoud not rest on our aures and fee satisfied that osing even one ife or aircraft is acceptabe. We have got to understand SD better. There are many crew coordination factors, and night vision gogges (NVGs) and forward ooking infrared (FLIR) fight increases the risk of having an accident by o- 15 times. Not ony does it cause accidents, but SD has an important effect on mission readiness and accompishment, and the abiity to be an effective part of the fighting team. Everyone is susceptibe to SD. If piots fee that it s not going to happen to them, then we have got to do a better job of increasing the awareness and driving home the point that SD is a serious probem. Contros can be paced in reationship to a potentia hazard. This can be done for SD at severa paces, from training through procedura changes to technoogica advancements. We are not giving enough attention to SD during our initia entry rotary-wing (IERW) courses. We don t spend a ot of time addressing SD during crew coordination training. Research is sporadic and there is probaby not-the cohesive effort that is required. There are very few pieces of equipment that have been introduced to dea with the probem of SD. The bottom ine on the effectiveness of contros today is not very good. In concusion, SD has not been given enough attention over the years, athough I recognize the effort by a few. Because of the jointness that we have here today, I submit that this is the forum to determine the efforts that we need to share data and estabish ong term working groups that can continue to dea with this probem. The areas of education, training, research and equipment a need to be addressed. Your chaenge is to put some meat on the bones and to address the how to better, both to recognize it and how to get out of it. 4

14 Introduction to the svmposium Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite wecomed the attendees and made the foowing remarks... In 1993 a combined Aviation Medicine/Safety Center symposium on SD was hed at Pensacoa. That conference was we attended and much agreement about coaboration between the service research agencies was made. Foowing the conference, a memorandum signed by both the Army and Navy Safety Center commanders was distributed to the Aviation Command, the First Aviation Brigade, and the Aviation Training Brigade. Many recommendations were made. However, athough much has gone on in the research fied, it has ony been in the ast year that some of the operationa issues have been addressed. This has been mainy in the foowing areas:. Agreement of a common academic definition for SD.. A standard of aircrew training in SD.. Attention to standardizing data on SD reated accidents. We have much more progress to make on this important issue, and so, as a member of the triservice working group on situationa awareness and SD, I was peased to be asked to chair this symposium sponsored by USASAM. You are here because we fee that in your roe as fight surgeons and safety officers, you have an enormous amount to offer to combat the probem of SD. We have representation from many of the aviation brigades and our sister services, and even internationa interest from Austraia and the Netherands. We think that we have put together a program that hopefuy not ony wi educate you, but wi aso stimuate some friendy discussion and debate within this forum. The aim is to gavanize you, once you return to your units, into coectivey heping the effort to enhance fight safety and operationa effectiveness by tacking the probem of SD. This is a symposium (Webster s definition is a meeting or conference for discussion of some topic, athough I prefer one of the aternatives - a convivia meeting for drinking, music and inteectua discussion (in ancient Greece} ). We do, therefore, encourage audience participation. We wi be pubishing the proceedings of this symposium.

15 Revision of the physioogv of SD and Puzzing Percentions video This presentation is not recorded in these proceedings. The physioogy of SD can be found in standard textbooks of aviation medicine, for exampe: Fundamentas of Aerospace Medicine, ed. DeHart, Lea and Febiger, Phiadephia, 1985 (ISBN o ). This pubication is aso U.S. Army FM-8. Aviation Medicine, ed. G. Dhenin, Tri-Med Books, London United States Army Aviation Medicine Handbook, ed. Crowey, Third Edition Aeromedica Training for Fight Personne, FM -30, (under review). The video Puzzing Perceptions is the most recent British training fim on SD. It was extremey we received by the conference audience. The video, reference number AF 9467, was kindy oaned by the United Kingdom Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC). Copies may be purchased from SSVC at the foowing address: SSVC Mutimedia; Chafont Grove, Narcot Lane, Chafont St. Peter, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, SL9 8TN, United Kingdom.

16 Session 1: The impact of SD on rotary-wing operations Introduction This session is going to cover the impact of SD on rotary-wing operations. You were reminded in the physioogy revision session that aviators suffer SD because of the innate imitations of their orientation senses in fight and the generation of erroneous visua and vestibuar cues. This is because we are human, and ever since man has been fying, that has been the weakest ink. Modem aircraft are potent and expensive weapon systems. Commanders can i-afford high osses from non-miitary causes such as SD. So how big is the probem? We are going to hear from each of the services about their experiences. We a know SD is a probem, but most research deas with fixed wing issues. I know it has concentrated your minds because we rarey concentrate on the rotary-wing aspect, but I am sure that by the end of the session, we wi see just how big a probem it is and the common areas between the services that we can attack. The impact of SD on Army rotary-wing operations Lieutenant Coone Ed Murdock opened this session. His presentation is not recorded in these proceedings, as it contained sensitive materia. Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite then presented detais of recent epidemioogica research performed at USAARL. The text and figures are reproduced beow. Introduction and methods The aim of this presentation is to show you some of the resuts of an anaysis of Army heicopter accidents that was originay compied by my predecessor, Coone Simon Dumford. I have recenty updated the survey to incude the fisca years 1993 to 1995, but most of the findings and concusions have remained the same. It wi be demonstrated that SD has a significant impact on miitary operations, and aso give the reader an idea of the typica Army SD heicopter accident. Previous studies in a services have suggested that the contribution of SD to aircraft accidents is probaby underestimated. So, in order to gain a better idea of the significance of this probem, we examined the accident data and summaries from the Army Safety Center of a Cass A through C accidents from fisca year 1987 through Three fight surgeons acting independenty reviewed each accident summary and extracted information. They were asked to cassify the accident according to the roe of SD and then to answer various questions. We used the definition of SD as foows: A term used to describe a variety of incidents occurring infight where the piot fais to sense correcty the position, motion or attitude of the aircraft or of himsef within the fixed co-ordinate system provided by the surface of the earth and 7

17 the gravitationa vertica. In addition, errors in perception by the piot of his position, motion or attitude with respecto his aircraft, or of his own aircraft reative to other aircraft, may aso be embraced within a broader definition of SD in fight. This excuded getting ost, but incuded contact with an obstace known to be present but misjudged to be sufficienty separated Tom the aircraft. Contact with an obstace whose presence was simpy unknown was not considered to be SD. Resuts of the study_ The cassification of SD that we used is shown in figure 1. Of 993 Cass A through C accidents during the period, 970 were entered into the study. The remainder were either simpe istings of other aircraft invoved in mutipe-aircraft accidents, or had been recassified ower than Cass C by the time computer anaysis began. We regarded SD as having a significant impact on the accident sequence if it was cassified either as major or contributory. Therefore, 30 percent of a accidents invoved SD (figure 2). Ninety percent of the SD accidents were type 1 SD (unaware of the error), and eight percent were type 2 (awareness of a conficting input of correct and incorrect perception of orientation). Cassification of Accidents Contributory SD did not occur or unknown Figure 1. Cassification of accidents. SD accidents had a particuary severe outcome. Thirty-six percent of SD accidents were Cass A compared to 18 percent of non-sd accidents (figure 3). The tota cost of the 30 percent of a accidents in which SD was impicated was amost as much as the 70 percent in which it was not (figure 4). The average cost of the SD accidents was significanty greater than the average cost of non-sd accidents. One hundred and ten ives were ost in 291 SD reated mishaps compared to 93 in 679 other accidents (figure 5). Again, the average number of ives ost per SD accident was significanty higher than the average per non-sd accident. Eighty-four of the SD deaths (three quarters) occurred in night accidents. It must be concuded, therefore, that a reduction in the SD accidents rate woud save a disproportionate amount of ives and money. - 8

18 The Roe of SD In the 8 year period , 30% of a Cass A-C accidents had SD as a MAJOR or contributory factor 700 6co SC0 4w 300 MO 1M n Figure 2. The roe of SD. The comparative severity of SD and non-sd accidents 36% of SD accidents were Cass A 18% of non-sd accidents were Cass A Figure 3. The comparative severity of SD and non-sd accidents. SD Costs Monetary Costs ( ) SD cost the US Army $467,890,000 n 1 Figure 4. SD costs (monetary). 9

19 SD Costs Cost in Lives ( ) 3 Figure 5. SD costs (ives ost). Type of fight Ony 13 percent of non-sd accidents occurre during night vision device.(nvd) use, whereas 46 percent of SD accidents invoved aircrew using NVDs. The increased risk of SD with NVDs can be iustrated in the accident rates for the various types of fight (figure 6). This is hardy a surprise, as fying is a highy visua occupation and if vision is degraded, then SD becomes more ikey. SD has ong been a recognized shortcoming to the otherwise enormous advantage of NVDs. Athough the carity of the night device image is improving with technoogy, imitations remain, particuary from the restricted fied of view. The infuence of Day/Night conditions in the SD and Non-SD rates Figure 6. The infuence of day/night conditions in the SD and non-sd rates. In figures 7 through 9, the SD accidents are broken down by aircraft according to the type of fying: day and night; and night, both unaided and aided. The percentages reate to accidents caused by SD for that heicopter. The average rate for that type of fying is shown by the horizonta ine. Statistica testing indicates that ony the UH-60 and AH-64 SD rates are 10

20 + significanty higher than the average. Both of these heicopters have features that might be considered as potentia factors in SD: the UH-60 has arge windshied piars bocking a part of the view from the cockpit, and the AH-64 has the FLIR night imaging system. There are, however, other potentia factors at pay, such as combat roes, and it woud be rash to draw concusions at this stage, other than aircrew fying today s missions in modern aircraft appear to be at just as great a risk of SD as before. For NVG fight, the OH-58 A/C and the UH-1 feature above average SD accident proportions, and of particuar note is that 64 percent of AH-64 FLIR accidents were attributed to SD. Percent SD Accidents Day and Night Average Figure 7. Percent SD accidents - day and night. Percent SD Accidents Night. Average Figure 8. Percent SD accidents - night. 11

21 Percent SD Accidents NVG 63.4% of FLIR ac&kata - due to SD. Figure 9. Percent SD accidents - NVG. Comparisons between aided and unaided night fight are not easy. Athough unaided fights are fown at greater atitude and may be technicay more simpe, they are essentiay fown bind, very ike instrument fight rues (IFR) conditions. On the other hand, NVD fights are fown in a more chaenging fashion near to the ground, and the NVDs themseves may, of course, imit perception and even create iusions. It can be seen that our resuts indicate that using NVDs increases the risk of SD. Fight hours data As we as ooking at the proportion of accidents due to SD, we have fying hours data for a fying, and since 1990, this is broken down into daytime fying and the various forms of night fying for each type of aircraft. Where there are enough accidents to anayze, we can investigate these rates. In figure 10 it can be seen that SD accidents (broken ine) represent an amost constant proportion of the overa (soid ine) Cass A through C accident rate. Athough there is a downward trend after the peak during Operation Desert Storm, matters are not reay getting better. Figure 11 again shows the overa rate and then the rate broken down into the various types of fight for a heicopters. The night aided SD rate cosey foows the overa accident rate for this category. If we break the rates down to individua types of aircraft, some differences become very striking (figure 12). As a comparator, the overa rate is in the top eft. The other graphs show tota day and night rates for the OH-58 A/C modes, the OH-58 D and the AH-64. It is pain to see that the OH-58 D and the AH-64 have both a higher overa accident rate and an equay high SD rate. 12

22 Day and Night Fight A Rotary Wing Accidents ~ Figure 10. Tota accident rates. z 30 a A Rotary Wing Accidents Day and Night Fight - ; ;qm/ Night Unaded Figh NIghI Aided Fight (NVG & FLIR) 8 -- I I P Figure 11. A rotary-wing accident rates. 13

23 Day and Night Fight OH-58 AC -- Figure 12. Day and night fight accident rates. Height and speed Accidents invoving SD were associated with a significanty ower height above the ground at the onset of the emergency than were accidents in which SD did not occur. Figure 13 shows the average height at the center of each box and the variation represented by the box and whiskers. The resuts are not surprising, as the end point of incorrect or inappropriate contro from SD is of course hitting the ground, and if one is near it to start with, the chances are greater. The high number of hover SD accidents is refected in this statistic. Simiary, SD accidents occurred at a sinnificantv ower airspeed (figure 14). This is again due to the many hover accidents. 14

24 Height Above the Ground at the Time of Emergency A Types of Fying 600, I 0 SD present SD absent Figure 13. Height above the ground at the time of emergency. Airspeed at the Time of Emergency A Types of Fying so 40 g 30 c c $ 20 FL w SD present SD absent Figure 14. Airspeed at the time of emergency. Number of crew disoriented In 59 percent (178) of a SD accidents, both front seat crew members were affected by SD. This can be broken down into day and night figures as shown in figure 15. In an aircrew survey conducted in 1993 which asked about aviators persona experience, it was much ess frequent for both crew to have ost orientation. The fact that there was an accident of course impies that the other crew member was not oriented enough to prevent the disorientation of the handing piot eading to oss of contro. 15

25 Both crew were disoriented in: 59% of a SD accidents 70% of Night SD accidents F 49% of Day SD accidents [ Aircrew survey: 2 crew disoriented in 29% of SD episodes] Figure 15. Both crew disoriented. Distraction There was judged to be a distraction inside the cockpit in 26 percent of SD accidents and outside the cockpit in 29 percent. In some accidents, there were distractions both inside and outside. Distractions inside were predominant in OH-58 A/C and D modes and AH-64, particuary during night aided fight, and distractions from outside were predominant in UH-1 and UH-60 accidents again during night aided fight. These findings are probaby mission - reated. This is obviousy a most important feature in the sequence eading to the SD accident, and one which can probaby be aeviated by vigorous crew coordination training. We are ooking further at the type of distraction from the fying task. Events Athough the Safety Center provides good data on some of the effects of the disorienting episode, we found it more usefu to use a modified event cassification when specificay considering SD. Athough a aircraft ended up on the ground or in the water, the first category in figure 16 represents both controed fight into terrain (CFIT) and inadvertent ground (or water) contact in transationa fight. The second argest group, drift and/or descent in the hover is pecuiar to vertica anding and take-off aircraft. Our study has emphasized the importance of SD in this phase of fight. We considered that most hover accidents were due to movement of the heicopter at a rate certainy beow the threshod of the vestibuar apparatus, and in many cases, beow that of the visua system. Recircuation events (brownout and whiteout) accounted for some 18 percent of a accidents. If one asks aircrew in what conditions are you most ikey to get SD?, the majority wi answer instrument meteoroogica conditions (IMC). There is no doubt that there are probaby more SD episodes in IMC, but our resuts show that there are very few accidents as a resut. This is probaby because aircrew expect SD in IMC and so are ready to counteract it, and aso that events generay occur we away from the ground, so there is more time to recover. The sma percentage of SD accidents associated with fight over water probaby refects the service roe. The hazard is certainy there. 16

26 Disorientation is possibe in good sight of the ground, or even on the ground. In taxi and hover-taxi accidents, perception of the gravitationa vertica and horizon are generay good, but judgment of cearance from obstaces has been poor or not attended to in some cases. The types of SD event - A Accidents J Figure 16. The types of SD event - a accidents. The graph for day accidents is simiar in its reative proportions to that for a accidents and is not reproduced here, but there are some subte differences in night fight. In unaided night fight (figure 17), the top two categories again predominate. The proportion of IMC-reated events, however, has not surprisingy gone up. Unaided night fight is generay conducted coser to the weather. The types of SD event - Night Unaided Figure 17. The types of SD event - night unaided. 17

27 The types of SD event - Night Aided Figure 18. The types of SD events - night aided. Factors eading to the mishap We can examine what went wrong to cause the accident in severa ways. For instance, did the handing piot misjudge a fight parameter. 3 Figure 19 shows that misjudgment of cearance from an obstace is overwheming in its prevaence, with most of the instances occurring in the hover. Simiary, misjudgment of atitude was more frequent because of the hover accidents where there was ess room for error. Misjudged Fight Parameters Figure 19. Misjudged fight parameters. Some other important features are shown in figure 20. Brownout aone accounted for amost 15 percent of the SD accidents. Iusions from remote sensors are pecuiar to the AH-64 in the current feet of Army heicopters. There were ony four cases, but this wi continue to be a potentia probem whenever we ook at an image that is not generated very cose to the eye. 18

28 Potentiay Important Features. Figure 20. Potentiay important features. Next, we tried to evauate the perceptua difficuties arising in the accident sequence. It can be seen in figure 21 that very few iusions caused SD accidents, whereas a deficiency of visua cues (i.e., absence of the primary aid to orientation) were featured in amost 25 percent. An interesting comparison can be made here between SD accidents and incidents. Figure 22 shows these features in the percentage of accidents compared to the percentage of SD episodes gathered from the 1993 survey of aircrew. It can be seen that whie there were sti a ot of cases of insufficient visua cues in both series, miseading visua and vestibuar cues (the iusions) were much more frequent in SD episodes that didn t ead to accidents. In other words, these instances of type 2 SD are recognized by aircrew and are generay overcome. Sensory Difficuty Figure 2 1. Sensory difficuty (1). 19

29 Frequency of Visua and Vestibuar factors in the accident anaysis and aircrew survey Figure 22. Frequency of visua and vestibuar factors in the accident anaysis and aircrew survey. Because of the high proportion of SD accidents using NVDs, we have started to try to evauate the probem. Figure 23 iustrates the fact that visua imitations associated with these devices, particuary the restricted fied of view, were considered to contribute to amost 30 percent of the SD accidents. The midde two categories in figure 23 both reate to AH-64 FLIR fying. Athough the information to assist orientation is presented in the integrated hemet and dispay sighting systems (IHADSS), it is not necessariy interpreted correcty or may even be ignored. Sensory Difficuty Combat training osses Figure 23. Sensory difficuty (2). The increased risk of SD during the Guf War coud probaby have been anticipated. Fifty percent of the tota heicopter osses in Saudi Arabia were considered to have invoved SD as the major factor. When these data were compared to those from other desert ocations, there was a significanty greater proportion of SD accidents from the Guf, so terrain is unikey to be the factor. As in_ previous studies, there seems to be a wartime effect on SD - the increased pressures of war or perhaps reduced safety margins. Owning the night does not come without 20

30 risks; 81 percent of Saudi nighttime osses were due to SD. It must be remembered that the operationa costs of SD are not imited to aircraft osse since few episodes of SD actuay ead to accidents. A high SD accident rate, therefore, impies an extra oss of operationa efficiency due to SD incidents of varying severity. Predisposing factors As in previous surveys, aircrew experience, as measured by their tota fying hours or years spent fying, does not confer immunity to SD. It is reassuring that neither hours of work nor hours of seep prior to the accident appeared to be reated to SD accident rates, but there shoud be no compacency in monitoring these areas. The absence of a ink with currency (as defined by fying hours in the previous 30 days) suggests that either the accident numbers invoved are too sma to be sensitive to sight variations in currency, or maybe aircrew with ess currency give themseves greater margins for safety. Mishan coding issues Ony 32 accidents had been coded as SD by the Safety Center. These were mosty the brownout, whiteout and some IMC-reated mishaps. We agreed with these codings, but considered that at east an additiona 44 accident shoud have had the Disorientation Safety Center code. Of course, we cassified a further 214 accidents as having SD as the major or contributory factor. In these accidents, we appied one of the other two Safety Center SD reated categories, Scan and Estimate, as shown in figure 24. Many of the SD accidents, therefore, may we be hidden in other Safety Center categories. This disparity in cassification is due in part to semantics. SD means different things to different groups of peope and the gray area that surrounds a human factor accidents adds to the probem. Simiary, if boards of inquiry have not been primed to watch for SD, they may not consider it, or may cassify accidents to reated factors such as ack of crew coordination. SAFETY CENTER CATEGORIES ALL SD-RELATED ACCIDENTS Figure 24. Safety Center categories. 21

31 The nature of rotary-wing SD This study confirms the wide ranging nature of SD in U.S. Army heicopter operations. Whie the we known causes do exist, they do not appear to predominate. For exampe, brownout, whiteout, or inadvertent entry to IMC among them account for ony 25 percent of the SD accidents. Other textbook conditions such as ficker vertigo or iusions due to downwash proved amost non-existent in our accident database, athough they were reported in the aircrew survey. Simiary, there were no obvious cases of vestibuar iusions causing accidents, athough we cannot rue out ow grade vestibuar disturbances. Aircrew distraction was thought to pay a part in 44 percent of SD accidents. The roe of poor visua cues was highighted by the reationship between SD and night fight, and by the high percentage of accidents in which the inadequacies of NVDs were considered to have payed a part. There is possiby a poor awareness among aircrew of how to prevent and overcome SD, but this is conjecture unti the hypothesis is propery tested. From the findings of this accident anaysis, it can be concuded that the typica picture of rotary-wing SD is ess one of a cassica vestibuar or visua iusion giving a piot vertigo, but more one of hard-pressed aircrew fying a systems intensive aircraft using NVDs faiing to detect a dangerous fight path. This matches with the high proportion of SD type 1 accidents that are present, as cassica SD episodes such as inadvertent entry to IMC or recircuation probems are more ikey to be type 2. Potentia soutions The fight surgeons who reviewed the accidents were asked to check a ist of potentia soutions for their appicabiity to the accident in question, as we as offering aternative recommendations. Figure 25 iustrates the findings. It was sautary to find that the potentia soution most often cited was nothing to do with technica hardware, but was simpy improved crew coordination. Indeed many of the recommendations from the accident reports suggested that the training in this area that has now been started shoud be enhanced. In many accidents, better aocation of crew duties, for exampe, one piot with his head inside and one with his head outside the cockpit, might have meant that at east one crew member woud have escaped disorientation. Aied to better crew coordination was another frequenty identified potentia soution, improved scanning. As far as hardware soutions are concerned, the most immediatey beneficia woud be the introduction of an audio warning on the radar atimeter. This is acking in many aircraft, despite the fact that the technoogy is on the shef and cheap. Given the situationa awareness demands on modem aircrew, can we afford not to have this simpe and highy beneficia device? Hover-ocks woud enabe aircrew to hod a hover with a ower workoad, and drift indicators coud provide important information about station-keeping. Another potentia soution of particuar importance to night fyers is injected symboogy for NVGs, the NVG head-up dispay (HUD). However, as mentioned earier, providing symboogy 22

32 does not necessariy mean that aircrew wi pay attention to it. Periphera vision devices and other improvements in genera instrumentation do not appear ikey to be of great benefit. Concusion The foowing points are made in concusion: Figure 25. Potentia soutions. SD is an important source of attrition of Army heicopter operations, costing an average $58 miion doars and 14 ives each year. SD accidents increased significanty during the Guf War. Simiar findings from other war zones (for exampe, the Fakands) suggesthat combat may ead to owered safety margins. The fact that 81 percent of nighttime accident osses in Saudi Arabia coud be attributed to SD highights the grave miitary impications of this probem. The contribution of SD accidents to the overa accident rate is not getting smaer. The increase in risk associated with night vision devices when compared to day fying is of particuar concern. The conditions which predispose to type 2 SD, such as brownout or inadvertent entry to IMC, are ikey to be we known to aircrew and thus more readiy overcome. The heicopter SD accident is not one of cassica vestibuar or visua iusions giving a piot vertigo, but is one of oss of orientationa cues eading to contact with the ground or an obstace. The fact that better crew coordination or scanning might have prevented many accident suggests that aircrew are ess ikey to be aware of the risk of distraction and the imitations of their orientationa senses which ead to type 1 SD. This aspect is open to training. 23

33 Recommendations Recommendations are subdivided into training and technoogica issues in figures 26 and 27, respectivey.- They are discussed further in the paper, SD - Initiatives to overcome a significant impact on rotary-wing operations ater in these proceedings. RECOMMENDATIONS - Training Commanders to be made aware of the potentia threat that SD poses during peace and war. * Detaied refresher training on the causes, manifestations and effects of SD. Expore the use of standard aircraft simuators for SD training. Intensify aircrew training in crew coordination and scanning. Figure 26. Recommendations - training. RECOMMENDATIONS - Technoogy Fit audio warnings on radar atimeters. Pursue the introduction of the NVG HUD. Continue the deveopment of hover ocks and simiar devices to reduce workoad. Deveop a heicopter specific instrument pane (incuding the provision of hover and drift information). Continue research into the specific causes of miitary RW SD and potentia soutions. Figure 27. Recommendations - technoogy. 24

34 Impact of SD on U.S. Navy rotary-wing operations Captain Myron Amond s presentation is not recorded in these proceedings as it contained sensitive materia. Impact of SD on U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) rotary-wing operations Commander Rick Mason gave the foowing presentation. The verba text is supported by figures 28 to 34. IMPACT OF SD ON USMC ROTARY WING OPERATIONS CDRRICKMASON 3DMARNEAIRCRAFTWNG DSN: You never ge n second chnnce to mnke n first impression. Head & Shouders commercia Figure 28. Tite - CDR Rick Mason. Introduction The USMC has approximatey 550 heicopters of the type designed to support the guy on the ground. The breakdown is shown in figure 29. The CH-46 is a troop transport, equivaent to the UH-60. The CH-53 D/E have a heavy ift capabiity and are equivaent to the CH-47E. The UH-1N are used in the same roe as the Army uses Kiowas, Hueys, UH-60s and Cobras. The attack heicopter in the USMC is the AH- W. 25

35 ORGANIZATION APPROX530HELOS CH-46E * 140-CH-53D/E * 80-UH-IN. I40-AH-IW * 5HELOMAGS:2 PAC,2LANT, WESTPAC FOUNDATIONISTHE ACEOFTHEMEU (COMPOSITE SQDNOF 12 CH-46,4CH-53, 4AH-IW,3UH-IN,AND6AV-SB) Figure 29. Organization. The USMC is organized into squadrons and Marine aircraft groups that can range from 4-10 squadrons within a group. The groups are primariy organized upon aircraft type which wi become mixed whenever they go operationa. The nuceus of the Marine aviation heicopter force is a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and its aviation combat eement consists of a nuceus of an H-46 squadron with attachments of CH-53s Cobras, and Hueys. They are designed to support a battaion anding team. The intensity of operations is shown in figure 30. INTENSITY OF OPERATIONS ATANYGIVENTIME: -2MEUSAREFLOATNG(MED/SWA/PAC) -2ARENWORKdJPS 01 ISEITHERFLOATINGORIN WORK-UPS ~APPROX20%AREOPERATNGAWAYFROM HOMEBASE 'Don'r mind the mues, jusi oad the wagons. Unknown Figure 30. Intensity of operations. Mishap rates The mishap rates are shown in figure 3 1. Note the tota for the 1990s so far: for USMC aviation, with a rotary-wing rate of We have a reativey high accident rate, but it must be remembered that most fights are operationa. We are heaviy tasked for depoyment and don t have any kind of training command. 26

36 CLASS A FLIGHT MISHAP RATES USMC RATE/# RW RATE/# FY R FY /20 532/ 0 FY i FY /10 Fy /8 I.1712 FY ?/ FY Totas 4.01/ SD(?) INVOLVED n 4110 /2 II4 o/4 IS/43 (42%) Statistics are no substitute for judgetnent. Heny Cq Figure 3 1. Cass A fight mishap rates. When I was requested to give this brief, I caed up the Safety Center and got a the numbers from them. What was interesting was that the numbers of SD mishaps was extremey ow. Fortunatey, I had access to our fies for FY and I started comparing what I had as far as the actua mishaps and the write ups that the Safety Center was quoting as an SD mishap. The numbers didn t agree. It was a coding issue as far as what they determined to be an SD mishap. So, the number on figure 31, 18 out of 43 mishaps (or 42 percent of the rotary-wing mishaps) is not Safety Center data. It s ony when you start breaking down each individua mishap that you start getting some SD factors. I shoud comment that one reason I have SD? in the coumn heading is because it depends on the definition of SD. Some of these may be more oss of situationa awareness. Of these 18 mishaps that I cassified as SD, 15 occurred away from the home operating airfied or base of either the aircrew or the aircraft. So, about 80 percent are occurring away from where these guys are normay operating. As far as Cass Bs, Cass Cs, and incidents are concerned, I ony had one or two come back from the Safety Center. I think again that s just a coding probem, so I don t have any data. If you reay want some good first-hand accounts and I ve been there stories, read the Safety Center magazine, Approach. It s amazing what we get peope to write and te about themseves, and it s probaby some of the best information as far as exampes of peope getting themseves in troube. Fortunatey, they re here to write about them, so I guess that s their bonus. The tvnica SD mishau See figure 32. Many of these factors have been addressed by previous speakers. 27

37 TYPICAL SD MISHAP FLIGHT NOT IN NORMAL OPERATING AREA DECREASED/ATYPICAL VISUAL CUES CREW NOT MONITORING FLIGHT PATH RESULTS IN CFIT Few things are harder to put with than a good exampe Mark Twain Figure 32. Typica SD mishap. We ve worked on a concept caed the spatia orientation equation (figure 33). Since this is primariy an Army audience, I figured I woud say it was operationa risk management for SD. We have three primary factors: a distraction, over a given ength of time, and in a certain environment. What we basicay say is that if you start adding up (and I won t put any numbers to it), it doesn t take much of a distraction for a very ong period of time before that person gets them sef into a high potentia for a disorientation. We don t see peope getting spatiay disoriented fying at 3,000 feet day VFR, just monitoring the airways and the radios. But if you put them cose to the ground in a tactica situation in margina weather on night vision devices, and they ve got peope chattering at them, it doesn t take much before they re task overoaded and not reay keeping track of what their instruments are teing them. SD EOUATION (SD ORM?) SD = [Distraction x Time] Environment EP Night Comm WX Task Saturation NVDS Scan Regression TERF Aeromedica Formation Aircrew Coord Tactica Figure 33. SD equation (SD ORM?) 28

38 Command concern IS HOMC CONCERNED? AVIATION SAFETY? YES SD MISHAPS? NO AVIATION SAFETY CAMPAIGN PLAN INCREASED EMPHASIS ON SIMULATORS The tnoreyou practice wkaf you know. I/M more you know whnr you pracfice. Dan McKinnon Figure 34. Is HQMC concerned? See figure 34. Headquarters USMC is concerned about aviation safety. In fact, as of 1 Sep 96, there is something caed the aviation safety campaign pan that USMC aviation has undertaken primariy based upon the high mishap rate. They are trying to sove some of the probems, but most have nothing to do with things that woud pertain to this discussion on SD. Most of them are things ike maintenance, manning and actua oading of squadrons with training events, etc. One thing that is a big issue and has something to do with this audience is that the USMC is going to put an increased emphasis on simuators tak more of the way the USMC trains their piots in the session on training, but essentiay the pan is not to add simuator events uness you can pu out an actua fight evoution. They want to try and save some aircraft wear and tear and aso try to reduce the risk. Right now it is panned that an initia Osprey piot wi have approximatey 80 percent of his time becoming quaified spent in a simuator. He is ony going to have 20 percent of his time spent in the actua aircraft. Is there concern about SD mishaps? No. Why? Because peope ike me haven t made enough of an issue of it and I think that after this meeting, it may be eevated to a higher eve. But as far as pinpointing the area is concerned, it s not happening. A ot of issues that are in the aviation safety campaign pan wi address these issues right here, but no one has said formay at the HQMC, go after the SD mishap rate and try to sove it. 29

39 Impact of SD on U.S. Air Force (USAF) rotary-wing operations Lieutenant Coone Jeffrey Hi s contribution to this presentation contained sensitive materia and is not recorded in these proceedings. Lieutenant Coone Jay Johnson gave the foowing presentation, I am honored to address this conference. I can tak to you about SD from a piot s and safety staff officer s point of view. The USAF doesn t appear to cassify mishaps as simpy SD mishaps. The USAF safety boards tend to break the causes down into smaer divisions such as didn t judge the cosure rate or inadvertenty entered weather and departed controed fight. In order to find SD in our mishaps, you have to ask the data base very specific questions and even then you may or may not find a of the data you re ooking for. I was ony abe to find three mishaps where SD was mentioned as just SD. I found five others when I queried the data base for brown and whiteouts. Ony one of these was a Cass A, B, or C mishap, the others being high accident potentia (HAP) reports. The USAF does not own a arge feet of heicopters. Our heicopters consist of MH-53 s, MH/HH-60 s and UH-1N s. They are spit among various commands, tasked with quite different missions incuding: combat rescue, specia operations, VIP support, nucear site support, and operationa testing. We don t have a ot of heicopters, but we have the same mishap probems as a of the services. The operations tempo is quite high. It s nice to know you re needed, but it woud aso be nice to be manned for the demand. Our depoyment rate at any one point in time is about 35 percent of the tota feet. The H-53 had a mishap rate of 7.88 per 100,000 hours ast year, but this was ony 1 Cass A over the 21,000 fying hours the H-53 few. The sma number of fying hours contribute to a higher rate. We don t have much of a Cass B rate, either. We either ding them or destroy them. So far in 1996 there have been zero SD incidents. From 1985 through 1995, the data base shows SD to be a cause in 8 mishaps, but ony one of the mishaps was a Cass A mishap (no fataities). It was a cassic SD mishap. The crew few an NVG approach, entered a brownout and the copiot caed for a go-around. The aircraft commander then said et s do it again. This time when the heicopter entered the brownout, no one caed for anything before the aircraft commander became disoriented and roed the aircraft. The other seven incidents were HAP reports which shoud be considered just as important because they were Cass As separated by time, distance, and uck. So far, thedata indicates that SD is not a probem. I dispute that. Just because we ve not crashed more aircraft is not a reason to disregard SD s importance. We need to do a better job of 30

40 cassifying SD, inputting it into the data base, and then anayzing the data to inform crews of the highest possibiities for suffering SD and putting themseves into a position of creating a mishap. Discussion session The discussion at this session was transcribed from audio tape. Questions are prefixed by Q, answers by A, and interjected statements by S. Q - CPT Kevin McMuen. Numbers of Army aviation incidents that gitch around Desert Shied/Storm. The hard part I have in the discussion of that is my commander has a dictum where he says mission first in combat, safety first in training. And obviousy there was a different situation going on at that time. I know there were some concerns, so how was that area in time handed in terms of the way the Army ooks at SD? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Those were not combat osses, they were accidents that occurred in training (in theater). Everything we documented were accidents. By definition, combat osses are excuded from our definition of accidents. S - Mr. Mike Moran. Let me offer historica perspective to the coection of this data. We started ooking at data in the eary 1980 s because the Army has such a arge rotary-wing feet. One of the first things we noticed was that even if you did a word search in the Safety Center under SD, or vertigo, severa things popped up right away. Number one, it aways happened in a Cass A accident. Number two, it usuay invoved a fataity. The second thing that we had to be very carefu of was to be very conservative in our coection of data. So the data that you ve seen today as far as the Army is concerned is very conservative data. There s a very good reason for this. The guys that are ooking at this are probaby the ony ones in the Army that are trained to ook for SD. The guys that are in the fied actuay coecting the data for the mishap investigation have not been trained. Nor is it on their checkist to ook for SD. So when you take after-the-fact data and you re trying to second guess what happened in that accident, you have to err on the side of caution. I just offer that as historica perspective, that the data put out by the Safety Center today is very conservative data. When we did an initia scrub right after Desert Shied/Storm, the Cass A accidents (not birds that got shot down or the ones going out on a combat mission). We re taking about training ash/trash missions that hit sand dunes, that from brown/whiteout conditions, percent of these accidents in which a fataity occurred were initiay ooked at as SD. We had to say, Wait, maybe we need to go back and take a ook at these things and reay scrub them carefuy. Because it is a serious area that we have been unabe to get our arms around in terms of training it out of existence. We re not doing a good job of training it. The instrumentation that s in our birds traditionay, historicay, have come from fixed wing aircraft. So you ve got fixed wing instrumentation in a rotary-wing aircraft that we re trying to adapt to do new missions that quite franky didn t exist 20 years ago in Vietnam. We didn t do masking and unmasking at 1 o cock in the morning with night vision gogges, with HELLFIRE missies strapped to the side of UH-1s. But that s what we re asking Apache piots to do today. And when he gets into a drift situation that s ess than 1 or 2 feet per second, 31

41 he physioogicay can t detect it. It s outside his enveope. Is that SD? Yes, it s part of that awareness issue. Q - MAJ Keith Steinhurst. Question for USAF - I thought I heard you say that you had one SD mishap? Since visua cues are a arge part of that and since I know you a have a specia procedure you use when you gogge up, I wanted to ask you about the data between the test ane gogging vs. not using the test anes, and what information you can give us about numbers on that. A - Lt Co1 Neubauer. When the test ane is used propery, we don t have the probems in the hover and over the water that we ve had in the past, but for about 4-5 years we just coudn t get the peope to wak in the room, get in the anes, sight the gogges correcty and then go out to the airpane. What we found out was that peope were going out to the airpane and ooking at the ights on the runway, focusing the gogges and then going to fy. Between minutes of fight, you can see the guys raising the gogges up and rubbing their eyes. When we d bring them back in and get the doctors invoved and then the peope woud correcty sight the gogges in the ane, they d go out and they coud fy for about 2 hours before they ended up fipping their gogges up and rubbing their eyes. You can ony put the ane there and post the procedures and te the peope to do it, and if they don t do it, then you end up with probems. It s in the reguations, it has to be done before every fight, the aircraft commander s responsibe for making sure everybody does it. Whether they do it or not 100 percent of the time, I coudn t te you, but I doubt it. Q - Mr. Bob Brooks. Question for the Army. When you taked about visua imitations, specificay fied of view (FOV) eading to 30 percent of the SD accidents, how did you come up with that number? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. This was part of the anaysis of the SD accidents that we undertook with the three fight surgeons asking them specificay did they fee there were any imitations with the NVDs that were responsibe for contributing to SD in that accident? Q - Mr. Bob Brooks. Was that specificay when it was written in the red book? Or was this just specuation on the foks who evauated the red books? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. I woudn t ca it specuation, I d ca it interpretation. Based upon what was written and what was impied. Q - Mr. Bob Brooks. You tak about how crew coordination coud and shoud be enhanced. Are you just taking about that, or is there any document going forward recommending that to anybody? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. There has been no document as a resut of my updated series of accidents, but it was one of the recommendations from my predecessor s report which has been 32

42 pubished as a USAARL report and been circuated far and wide within the Army community, not east to the Safety Center. I reiterate the point that there were many recommendations from the accident reports themseves that said that we shoud reay get to grips with the crew coordination. training which we ve now started, make sure that everybody competes the training, and in many cases, consider refresher training as we. Q - CW4 Smoka. A question for the Navy on your accident data. You said it s excusive to a trainers or training aircraft. How woud it affect the accident rate if you were to incude a of the operationa accidents and training accidents into the same rates? A - Capt Amond. That s a good question. In fact, Lt Cdr Smith, our psychoogist, is ooking at that factor by putting the training aircraft into the human factors anaysis database. This wi be briefed to the Navy Air Board, and that s one of the questions they ask, aso. It s so current and new that they haven t done it yet, but that s the next step. Q - CW4 Smoka. For Cdr Mason - You referenced a training manua that you used for USMC operations. Is it avaiabe to other services? A - Cdr Mason. It s not reay a training manua, per se, but a matrix for what they consider to be a combat capabe piot. Yes, it is avaiabe. Going back to what you asked, Captain Amond, I know that if you were to incude the training mishaps on the heicopter side, it woud drive the numbers down significanty because we haven t had a Cass A heicopter mishap in (I think) 18 years. Q - Mr. Bi Ercoine. I think I understood you to say that there are very few vestibuar SD mishaps from the rotary-wing aspect. It seems in that environment, that woud probaby be one of the biggest probems you woud have, so either you re doing something correct in training, or something. Because even when we go out in the Barany Chair, when you put your head down to the side and rotate just a bit, as soon as you pu your head up, you re going to get a strong sensation to probaby push the nose down, or something ike that. So, how woud you expain this ack of vestibuar effects? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. What I m trying to emphasize is that the cassica vestibuar iusions that we read about in our text books and most of us are trained upon as the causes of SD: the somatogravic iusion, coriois, and so on, which are the obvious iusions, do not appear to be prevaent in the accident database. There are vestibuar disturbances, I am quite sure, but most of them are sub-threshod ones. Ones we don t perceive. The emphasis is to try and redress the baance from a position that you re not going to fee that you re going to be spatiay disorientated in the way that you do on the Barany chair where you fee dizzy, but that rotarywing SD is more ikey to have an insidious onset because your vestibuar system may we be being stimuated, but at a rate beow what you can perceive. 33

43 Q - Dr. Tamara Cheette. G-excess iusion: A ot of times I saw in the taxonomies: major cause, faiure to notice decent into water. You coud easiy phrase that differenty to say potentiay, piot experienced G-excess iusion that created decent into water. So, some of these comments are a question of taxonomy. The taxonomy does not incude a ot of words that are vestibuar iusions. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. That s a perfecty vaid point. To bring up a question you asked earier this morning. There may be somebody here now that can answer it. Do we train aviators on G- excess iusion? I cannot reca seeing that in the FM-301. A - CPT Thompson. No, we do not teach that. S - Dr. Cheette. I woud ike to send you a video tape that the USAF produced about 4 years ago as a training tape to go out to piots. It does an exceent job of expaining how that iusion can occur and what coud resut. Q - CW4 Antoskow. One of the recommendations you had was an audio warning on the radar atimeter. This gives you straight down capabiity, and some of the accidents you showed occurred over soping terrain, that s not going to hep you in that situation. Over water, sure. I ve fown a ot of gogges and invariaby, a radar atimeter woud not have heped me on some of the cose cas that I ve had where I need proximity warning on something out there. That technoogy is out there. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. You re right. We ony made the recommendation where it woud have heped, in those accidents where the aircraft impacted verticay. S - CW5 Bi Ramsey. I was the standardization officer for the -17th Cav which had the first of the OH-58 accidents in Desert Storm. The instructor piot (IP) had 7,000 hours fight time. We thought we were we quaified to hande the situation in the desert, due to Nationa Training Center (NTC). Come to find out, the first accident, he few the aircraft into the ground, into a sand dune. Sow decent, thought he was under contro, was not. We went back and ooked at the accident and discussed it with the board. Figured we needed to do some daytime training to insti in our piots that the situation was different. We came to find out that we were deaing with more than one visua iusion at a time. We coud have a combination of visua iusions. I think that was what was confusing the piots. They were abe to recognize one, but when it came to three or four, they had a probem with it. We went out and did daytime training, had taks, pued out manuas, and taked about visua iusions. We sent out a team to train, they trained daytime and night. Good crew coordination. We sat down every week with a the piots and discussed visua iusions to prevent us driving panes into the sand. It wasn t just one iusion. It was a combination. We taked about the OH-58D Task Force 118 that had the software in their system that coud give them an audio and visua indication once you descended beow 50 feet. It took-us two accidents before 1-17th Cav got the software to be put in that airpane so we d have some assistance. Not ony did it keep us from running into the sand dunes in front of 34

44 us, but it did give us a safe margin of things beow us. Piots scream and hoer to give us things that wi hep protect us. Wings was taking about a -17 that crashed a coupe of years ago in the desert. They said piots had a probem with iusions and getting SD. They put a system in that airpane-that the guy got in troube for. It woud right that airpane back up. Is that true? S - Lt Co1 Neubauer. There has been some work with the ground avoidance system. Initiay, the ground avoidance system had some probems with acceptance among the piot community. Piots are very reticent to give over contro to something they have no contro over. Therefore, it has been sow to be accepted within the USAF community. Q - Unidentified. Who covers accident statistics for DEA and shaow water Navy Coast Guard? A - Lt Co1 Bra&Waite. Department of Pubic Transportation. Q - Unidentified. Woudn t they have a higher incidence of SD accidents? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. There is no representative here, but I beieve the Coast Guard s incidence of SD is actuay quite ow, primariy because they have a heicopter caed the Dauphin, that wi do it a for you. A their heicopters are equipped with an automatic hover hod system. They come into a hover, it just sits there and hods for them, they don t have to worry about hitting the water. They re imited on the atitudes they fy, and they don t do a tremendous amount of night training. S - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Thank you to the speakers. Are we a convinced in this forum that SD has a serious impact? A agreed. We are the professionas in aeromedica and safety environment. What we need to do, and as one of the objectives of this symposium is to be abe to project our concern onto the peope who can hep us overcome this probem. Let s think about how we can move things forward now that we ve been abe to bring everybody together here and share our concern for SD in the rotary-wing environment. Pease be thinking how we can push that concern onto our immediate commanders, up to your commanding officers/generas, so that we can come out with some action pans that we can impement ater on. 35

45 Session 2: Training initiatives to overcome SD in rotary-wing operations Introduction We heard in Session 1 about the size of the SD probem. This session concerns what we, as aeromedica and safety professionas, can do about it. One of the generic aims of anyone with a responsibiity for fight safety and operationa effectiveness is to impart new found knowedge to the user, the aviator and his or her commander. Without an understanding of the nature and effects of SD, the aviator is poory paced to dea with the probem when it wi inevitaby face him or her. Training is, therefore, the first pre-requisite of the contro of SD. Because it is reativey owtech, it does not attract the sort of attention that it deserves. We are here to redress that baance. Our aviator training requirements are, in fact, reguated by standard NATO agreements and other air standardization agreements. It s going to be interesting to hear whether we reay compy with those requirements. Training initiatives to overcome SD in the Army Captain Greg Thompson started this presentation. Figures 35 to 42 are a sef-expanatory outine of his presentation. Ground Based Training Cassroom Instruction SD Demonstrators Timing/frequency of instruction Audit of training Ground based training initiatives 7 Figure 35. Ground based training. 36

46 Termina Learning Obiective: Whie performing as an aircrew member, the student wi manage SD in accordance with (Ai9 FM I and FM 8-2,_,,,. Figure 36. Termina earning objective. Enabing Learning Objectives: Identify correct SD terminoogy Identify the visua system Identify visua iusions Identify components of vestibuar system Identify vestibuar iusions Identify proprioceptive mechanism of equiibrium Identify cassification of SD Identify measures of SD prevention Identify SD corrective actions Figure 37. Enabing earning objectives. Aviator Instruction SD presented as a kier Recognition - Compensation Instrument Proficiency Terminoogy + STANAG Compiance AIR STDS Compiance Figure 38. Aviator instruction. 37

47 SD Demonstrators Barany Chair modified with cycic z4 Corioii Iusion B Nystagmus B Graveyard scenarios - cycic diipacement 6 Average initia entry RW Cass: 30 + Students undergoing Barany: 3 Figure 39. SD demonstrators. Frequency of Instruction PO/ thxfuency duration initia Entry RW once 3 hours Transitions once 1 hour instructor Piots once 1 hour Fixed Wing Fight Engineers once 1 hour Refresher none Figure 40. Frequency of instruction. Audit of training Initia entry RW Aeromedica Factors Examination other POI written exams esson pans undergo annua review Figure 41. Audit of training. 38

48 Ground Based Training Initiatives SD esson pan in revision More time for SD demonstration Vaidate ground based training with airborne based demonstrations Incusion of aircrew members (enisted) to provide for crew coordination FM -301 in revision Figure 42. Ground based training initiatives. Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite then presented the new initiative of the SD Demonstration Sortie. The text of his short presentation is given beow. For a more comprehensive description of the SD Demonstration Sortie, readers are referred to a preprint of the author s submission to Aviation, Space and Environmenta Medicine at appendix C. We have a particuar initiative in the Army aeromedica program to enhance the awareness of SD, the British Army Air Corps SD demonstration sortie. It is we estabished that after ectures on SD, aircrew shoud experience some of the iusions in a ground based device. Most air forces aso provide some instruction to their fight crew on how to cope with SD once it has occurred. Over 20 years ago, an AGARD working group recommended that an in-fight demonstration of SD shoud be given to a student aircrew. However, during some work I did on the standardization of some aspects of SD a coupe of years ago, it was cear that very few services actuay do this. We in British Army Aviation aso suffer a great proportion of disorientation mishaps (currenty about 16 percent of a heicopter accidents which cause two-thirds of the fataities), and so we beieve that there is a most important pace for a demonstration to reinforce the faibiity of the orientation senses during an actua fying sortie. The primary advantage of an airborne demonstration is that the student can experience his own imitations, and observe the reactions of his coeagues in the environment in which he is to operate (and not just in an odd-shaped piece of hardware on the ground). The demonstration is programmed towards the end of the basic rotary-wing phase of fight training, approximatey four weeks after their aeromedica training modue, and before the students commence rotarywing instrument fight. Refresher sorties are fown every 4 years. A sorties are fown by Army fight surgeon piots, and consist of a series of controed maneuvers in both forward fight and hover. Three students are fown at a time, one being the bindfoded subject for a particuar maneuver who gives a running commentary on his perception of the aircraft s motion. The other two students act as observers for a maneuver and then take their turn. The sortie is designed to 39

49 stress insidious disorientation - the start point of the sometimes catastrophic type 1 SD, and not to deiberatey provoke cassica vestibuar iusions. In the U.K., we have been fying this sortie for 14 years, and are abe to demonstrate that since we have been conducting the sortie, the SD accident rate has been reduced from 2.04 accidents per 100,000 fying hours to So, the sortie has saved ives and heicopters. A further benefit is cost effectiveness. Most services empoy some mechanica means to demonstrate SD. These devices tend to be expensive and we know of none that are taiored to the specific needs of the heicopter piot. In 14 years, we have fown neary 1700 students in 310 heicopter hours. Even using 1996 miitary operating costs, this represents a charge of about $150 per student. The tota operating cost has been just over a quarter of a miion doars, or an average annua sum of $18,000. The overa figure is ess than one tenth of the repacement cost of even the east expensive British Army heicopter, and it woud take many years of training at this cost to justify the purchase of a modern SD simuator. When I presented this topic at ast year s Aerospace Medica Association (AsMA) meeting, I said that I beieved that simiar instruction coud be readiy adopted by other services and prove to be of great benefit. I am peased to say that I am just about to start demonstrating the SD demonstration sortie to the U.S. Army. I have had to train an IP to actuay fy the sortie, but it is most important that a fight surgeon is on-board to conducthe sortie and discuss the maneuvers. I shoud aso briefy mention training in the management of recognized (type 2) SD as opposed to demonstration of the imitations of the senses. This is earning fying procedures to cope with SD circumstances once they have been encountered, and is ceary the responsibiity of the enightened IP in both simuator and actua fying sorties. Most services seem to do this, but a too often, on an ad hoc basis. I firmy beieve that recovery from unusua attitudes, and action upon inadvertent entry to IMC shoud be estabished as training objectives in the fight syabus, and not merey be an occasiona demonstration. Training shoud be aircraft type specific and, athough some generic instruction may be possibe on initia entry courses, further training wi be required when a piot first encounters different cimatic or operationa scenarios (for exampe, heicopter snow andings). 40

50 Training initiatives to overcome SD in the USAF Squadron Leader Graeme Maidment started this presentation. Figures 43 to 56 are a sefexpanatory.outine of his presentation. TRAINING INITIATIVES TO OVERCOME SD IN THE USAF SQN LDR G MAIDMENT RAF ARMSTRONG LABORATORY SPATIAL DSORENTATON CiXJNTERYEASURES TASK GROUP Figure 43. Tite - Sqn Ldr G. Maidment, RAF. ROTARY WING TRAINING IN THE USAF STUDENT COMMISSIONED SELECTED FOR FLYING TRAINING 20 HOURS ON T3 SUPT OR T37 - GROUND-BASED SD TRAINING Figure 44. Rotary-wing training in the USAF. 41

51 INITIAL GROUND-BASED SD TRAINING 3 DAYS AT APTF DURING SUPT CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION PRACTCAL DEMONSTRATONS BARANY CHAIR VSTA VERGON Figure 45. Initia ground based SD training. INITIAL SD CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION TYPES OF DSORENTAON VSON FIELDS OF VISION FOCAL AND AMBIENT VISION DEPTH PERCEPTION VSUAL PERCEPTON ILLUSIONS LANDING ILLUSIONS NIGHT VSON AND NVGs Figure 46. Initia SD cassroom instruction. INITIAL SD CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION (CONT) INNER EAR ILLUSIONS LEANS. CORKMJS ILLUSION. GtAW RAND ILLUSION GZXE!%S EFFECT. SEAT-OF-THE-PANTS PERCEPTION PROBLEMS RECOVERY FROM SD Figure 47. Initia SD cassroom instruction (cant). 42

52 ROTARY WING TRAINING AT FORT RUCKER 6 WEEKS CONTACT FLYING 6 WEEKS INSTRUMENT TRAINING UNUSUAL ATUDES 8 WEEKS BASIC COMBAT SKILLS 4 WEEKS NIGHT FLYING (INCLUDING NVGs) Figure 48. Rotary-wing training at Fort Rucker. COMBAT CREW TRAINING AT KIRTLAND AFB TH-53A, MHdOG OR UH-1 NO SPECIFIC IN-FLIGHT SD TRAINING NVG I INSTRUMENT FLYING AS PART OF SYLLABUS BROWNOUT I WHITEOUT EMPHASIS ON CRM DURING DISORIENTATION Figure 49. Combat crew training at Kirkand AFB. REFRESHER TRAINING EVERY 3 YEARS 1 DAY AT APTF CLASSROOM INSTRUCTON NO PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATIONS AIRC - ANNUAL INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE UNIT-LEVEL CLASSROOM TRAINING INCLUDES SD CONDUCTED BY GRADUATE OF AIS WTH ASDD EXPERIENCE Figure 50. Refresher training. 43

53 STANDARDIZATION DOCUMENTS STANAG 3114: AEROMEDICAL TRAINING OF FLIGHT CREW PROPOSED ADVISORY PUBLICATIO N 61/116/N: AVATON MEDICINE I PHYSIOLOGICAL TRAINING OF AIRCREW IN SD Figure 5 1. Standardization documents. Mention shoud be made of the Gyroab GL-2000 S. This is owned by the USAF Schoo of Aviation Medicine (USAFSAM) as a disorientation demonstrator and trainer. Its fu potentia for research is sti being expored. The device is abe to move simutaneousy in 4 axes (figure 52). The maximum rates of rotation and anguar acceerations are shown in figure 53, and other features in figure 54. Motion can aso be sub-threshod. Basic profies (figure 55) have been written for fixed wing aircraft and evauated in a successfu troop tria. There was a 95 percent reiabiity for iusions (type 1) and sensory confict (type 2). There is potentia for more advanced profies, with greater piot interaction, and possiby for rotary-wing configured profies. Possibe exampes are shown in figure 56. Forces coud be produced to simuate transition to/from the hover, but might be imited by a ack of vertica transation. As yet, no customer has stated that they need this training in the rotary-wing community. Panetary Pitch Yaw Ro J Figure 52. Advanced SD demonstrator (ASDD). 44

54 ASDD MOTION MOTON PLANETARY PITCH ROLL YAW MAX ACCEL DEGISEC= MAX SPEED RPM (DEGISEC) Figure 53. ASDD motion. FEATURES 360 DEGREES MOTION IN 4 AXES MAXIMUM 2.26 SEAMLESS WDE FIELD OF VEWVSUAL DISPLAY. VARABLE AIRCRAFT COCKPT CONFIGURATION TRUE-READING INSTRUMENTS. IN-THE-LOOP CONTROL Figure 54. ASDD features. ASDD - BASIC PROFILES SUB-THRESHOLD MOVEMENT DARK TAKE-OFF (SOMATOGRAVC ILLUSION) PITCH GRAVEYARD SPIN (SOMATOGYRAL ILLUSION) YAW GRAVEYARD SPIRAL ROLL BLACK HOLE APPROACH (VSUAL ILLUSION) Figure 55. ASDD basic profies. 45

55 ASDD - POTENTIAL ROTARY- WING APPLICATIONS CONFIGURABLE COCKPIT TRANSITION TO I FROM HOVER HOVER SW-THRESHOLD MOVEMENT. YAW COUNTER-ROTATION VISUALS - BROWNOUT I WHITEOUT NVGs Figure 56. ASDD - Potentia rotary-wing appications. Lieutenant Coone Jeffrey Hi then gave a presentation on USAF SD training as part of instrument refresher training. Figures 57 to 66 are a sef-expanatory outine of his presentation. Lt Co1 Jeffrey Hi 16 Operationa Support Squadron DSN Hurburt Fd, Forida jeff.hi~huriburt.af.mii Figure 57. Tite - Lt Co1 Jeffrey Hi. INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE REQUIRED OF ALL USAF PILOTS * AFI I -401 AT LEAST EVERY 18 MONTHS AFMAN SD IS REQUIRED TOPIC * IF POSSIBLE, BY PHYSIOLOGIST or FLIGHT SURGEON Figure 58. Instrument refresher course) (1). 46

56 INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE RECOMMENDED OUTLINE - AFh4AN II-210 NO STANDARDIZED PRESENTATION USUALLY ORGANIZED AS BASE LEVEL Figure 59. Instrument refresher course (2). Lh?3 RUMENT REFRJWIER COURSE (AIR COMBAT COMMAND),, DESIGNED FOR FIGHTERS ADDRESSES HUMAN PERCEPTION SD SITUATIONAL AWARENESS Figure 60. Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (1). INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE OBJECTIVES. W Define human performance as it pertains to the aviation environment Understand the infuences of human perception on deveoping and maintaining situationa awareness Discuss human perception and perceptua iusions eading to SD Review standard recovery procedures for SD 6 Figure 61. Instrument refresher course - objectives. 47

57 INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE (AIR COMBAT COMMAND) MISHAP ANALYSIS SITUATIONAL AWARENESS ATTENTION MANAGEhBXT AIRCREW REACTION TIME Figure 62. Instrument refresher course (Air Combit Command) (2). INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE (AIR COMBAT COMMAND) PERCEPTUAL ILLUSIONS - VISUAL RUNWAY WIDTH/LENGTH/SLOPE ~TERRAINTEXTUREJ%ATURES * BLACK HOLE * APPROACH LIGHTING 8 Figure 63. Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (3). INSTRUMENTREFRESHERCOURSE. (AIR COMBAT COMMAND) PERCEPTUAL ILLUSIONS vestibular LEANS - VERTIGO -GIANTHAND * G-EXCESS ILLUSION 9 Figure 64. Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (4). 48

58 INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE (AIR COMBAT COMMAND) LOW ALTITUDE MISHAPS * RECOVERY FROM SD - VISUAL DOMINANCE...VMC - VISUAL DOMINANCE...IMC - CONDITIONS RESTRICTING INSTRUMENT USE 10 Figure 65. Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (5). INSTRUMENT REFRESHER COURSE (AIR COMBAT COMMAND) MEJSA PLANNING MODEL M-ISSION E-NVIRONMENT J-ET &ITUATION A-IRCREW PRE-FLIGHT BRIEFJNG II Figure 66. Instrument refresher course (Air Combat Command) (6). 49

59 Training initiatives to overcome SD in the U.S. Navy Captain Jonathan B. Cark gave this presentation. The text and figures are reproduced beow. TRAINING AND RESEARCH INITIATIVES TO OVERCOME SD IN THE U.S. NAVY CAPT Jonathon Cark MC USN (FS) Nava Aerospace Medica Research Laboratory Spatia Orientation Systems/ Code Hovey Road Pensacoa, FL Figure 67. Tite - CAPT Jonathon Cark I m going to be taking about training and research initiatives to overcome SD in the Navy. I throw in research because I m from the research ab and much of what we do now is directed at supporting training initiatives. I aways ike this quote: It s been said that good judgment is based on experience, but that unfortunatey good experience is based on bad judgment. (VADM James B. Stockdae USN (retd) from A Vietnam Experience ). Training is an attempt to obtain good experience without necessariy having to go through the course of bad judgment, by earning vicariousy from others mistakes. Much of what we do now in training is based on essons earned by the tragedy of mishaps, and SD is a big component of that. Ground based training Our ground based training is composed of a number of different courses of instruction. The first is given primariy to the aeromedica personne, that s the fight surgeons, physioogists and aviation experimenta psychoogists (figure 68). It is embedded in a 6 month course in Pensacoa. The disorientation syabus is 3 hours ong, 2 hours of which is didactic instruction. Another hour is case presentations where we take actua mishaps and go through some of the teaching points, thus aowing peope to get some experience using the terminoogy. Particuary, we tak about mishap investigation and how you woud prevent this in the future. We aso show a video tape on SD. We re shifting to what I ca case-based instruction which uses actua mishap scenarios. We tak about disorientation, the definitions, and the impact of disorientation. Certainy Desert Storm taught us some essons there. We ost more personne to disorientation mishaps than to direct enemy action, and it was primariy a rotary-wing probem. So SD is a kier, a showstopper, and just as significant a probem as combat attrition osses. The basic Navy SD training 50

60 syabus is reproduced at appendix D. The fight surgeons and physioogists can take back this information to the squadrons, cut and paste to their individua type airframes and use in a course of instruction at a squadron eve. Student Nava Fight Surgeon Student Nava Aerospace Physioogist Ground based SD training - Nava Aerospace and Operationa Medica Institute (NAMI) Academic Phase - SD Syabus in the Environmenta Physioogy Section - Lecture (2-50 minute periods) - Introduction - Impact Of SD - Neuroogy Of Spatia Orientation Systems * Spatia Disorientation Iusions * Operationa Aspects Of SD - Case presentations (1-50 minute period) * videos of mishap footage, mishap computer simuations * UK RAF video (Puzzing perceptions) Figure 68. Student Nava fight surgeon and student nava aerospace physioogist ground based SD training. The next type of ground based training is for a aircrew and aviators. This is in the first month that aviators and other aviation personne go through Pensacoa. In Nava Aviation Schoos Command, there is a course of instruction taught at the physioogy training unit on disorientation and visua iusions (figure 69). This is a 2 hour ecture, taught by aerospace physioogists and aviation physioogy technicians. One hour covers unaided night vision and visua probems and a discussion of visua iusions, foowed by a 50 minute ecture on SD. They re trying to shift to more case-based earning, but presenty it is more didactic. The physioogists and fight surgeons go through SD training twice in the first 6 months in both aeromedica training, and during generic aviator aircrew training. Hopefuy by now they ve picked up some of the aspects of SD. We use the Muti-Station Disorientation Demonstrator (MSDD) and the Barany Chair for SD demonstrations. In genera, the MSDD is used for initia training, but not afterwards. The Barany Chair is primariy a backup to our MSDD, which I tak about next. 51

61 Entry Leve Aviator/ Aircrew Training Ground based SD training Nava Aviation Schoos Command Aviation Indoctrination Phase - curricuumanaged by Nava Aviation Physioogy Training Program (NAPTP) minute ectures - Unaided Night Vision and Visua Probems (50 minutes). Anatomy and Physioogy of Vision/ Dark Adaptation * Visua Iusions - SD (SO minutes) Figure 69. Entry eve aviator/aircrew training ground based SD training (1). Ground based demonstrators The MSDD is a 10 station capsue on a 10 foot arm. This device is actuay unique in the word. It costs about a miion doars. It was designed in the ate 1970 s and buit in the eary 1980 s. Student aviators experience it in the fust month of their academic phase (when they re getting just the basic of aerodynamics). They get about a 30 minute demonstration, 10 or 15 minutes is in the device and then the remainder of the time is spent observing what other peope are going through. The purpose of this device is to estabish the compeing nature of some visua and vestibuar iusions. Again, because we can train a arge number of peope, we re abe to enhance the training for everybody, so that everybody experiences these different types of iusions. The device has a fairy nice fied of view that ooks outward onto a screen that s about 60 feet from the center upon which you can project various visua scenes, primariy stripes and staright patterns. The capsues can rotate in one of four positions facing in, out, forwards or backwards with respect to rotation. Students go through a number of the visua iusions, circuar vection and autokinesis, the somatogravic and somatogyra iusions. Unfortunatey, it s probaby ost on these guys because they don t actuay start the fight training phase for 4 months. Certainy a time that woud probaby be better for it woud be during the instrument tmining. 52

62 Entry Leve Aviator/ Aircrew Training Ground based SD training SD demonstration (30 minutes as subject and observer) Muti-station Disorientation Demonstrator (MSDD) * estabish compeing nature of perceptu visua and vestbuar iusions * IO rubjecu in variabe position capsues on IO foot centrifi~ye + I20 deg Horizonta x 40 deg vertica FOV. I20 deg/ ICC anguar veocity/ I5 dey/ we2 ansurr acceeration * Visua Iusions (autokinesis. circuarvection) * Vestibuar Iusions (sub and suprathrahod stimuus) - Scmuog?d iusion (Gnv~~xd Spin/ Spira) - Ocuogyn iusion (cross couped Coriois iusion) - Scmatogrwic iymns (Pitch up. Pitch down, Ltcnd tit) Figure 70. Entry eve aviator/aircrew training ground based SD training (2). As you know, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine aviators go through a ti fixed wing syabus prior to the rotary-wing syabus (figure 71), so they get disorientation training in both fixed and rotary-wing in the instrument syabus in ground schoo. The fight instrument manua is our bibe as far as instrument training, where there is a section on disorientation, athough it s quite dated. The discussion is mainy on the probems in visua meteroogica conditions (VMC)/IMC transition. A ot of time is spent on instrument scan pattern and what to do in unusua attitude recovery and inadvertent entry to IMC. There is not much on recognizing SD, but rather how to recover from it. Initia Training (Student Nava Aviator) Ground based SD training Training Air Wing Instrument Ground Schoo * 2 week academic (cassmom) phase. primary fight trainins (fixed win&y T-34C) * advanced fight training (rotary wing/ TH-57). simuators prior to Basic and Radio Instrument (BU RI) fight phase. NATOPS Fiyht Instrument Manua WFIM) Chapter 19 * covers areas reated to SD prevention. recognition. and recovery * instmment scan. FP./ VFR transition. inadvarcnt IMC Figure 71. Initia training (student Nava aviator) ground based SD training. We have refresher training every four years as required by our Nava Aviation Training Operating Procedure Standardization (NATOPS) (figure 72). Everyone on fight status receives it even whie in a non-fying biet. There s a program manager in Pensacoa who manages the syabus, which is reativey standardized. Again, refresher training is two 50 minute ectures. Essentiay, it s the same didactic ectures that were given in the introductory phase, with some aircraft specific case-based earning. 53

63 Ground based Refresher SD training (Designated Fight Personne) Aviation Physioogy Training Unit (APTU) Reffesher Physioogy syabus - -c of insmrction same as Entry Leve Aviator/ Aircrew Training - aniadum managed by Nava Aviation PhysiobSy Training RognmwF? minute ectures - Unaided Night Vision and Visua PnMems (SO minutes) - SD (SO minutes) Figure 72. Ground based refresher SD training (designated fight personne). The other aspect of ground based training that is pertinent to disorientation occurs in the instructor training unit (ITU) (figure 73). These peope are the designated aviators who are going to be trained as fight instructors. During this ITU phase, there are severa different eves of SD training, depending on the type of instructor. A instructors receive a 2 hour bock in out of contro fight (OCF) recovery and recognizing sensory perceptua probems. The most comprehensive eve is given to the foks that are routiney putting their aircraft into unusua attitudes, that s the famiiarization and acrobatics instructors. Our standardization piots who evauate the instructors aso receive another 2 hours. The extent of ITU instruction depends on what eve of instruction the aviator is going to be administering. The vast majority of this training is on recovery techniques. Instructor training Ground based SD training Training Air Wing Instructor Training Unit (ITU) - Out of Contro Fight (OCF) Syabus * Basic Fight Instmcton - 2 hours * Famiiarization (FAh4), Acrobatics (PA) I FORM Instructors - 4 hours * Stadadzation Piots (Instructor Examines.) - 2 hours - emphasii rewgnition and pmxphaa probems (spatia and tempora dii0iion) Fight based traininq Figure 73. Instructor training ground based SD training. Fight based SD training is done by standard instrument piots, not anybody with speciaized aeromedica training. A Nava aviators go through fixed wing training first (figure 74). 54

64 Because a piots in the Nava air forces receive this, the majority of disorientation training is embedded into the fixed wing syabus in the T-34 singe engine turbo-prop aircraft. Student Nava aviators receive a 1% to 2 hour sortie focusing on unusua attitude recovery. It covers unusua attitude recovery using fu and partia pane, and various things that are reated to disorientation (inadvertent IMC, VFR/IFR transitions, etc.) Initia Training (Student Nava Aviator) Fight based SD training * Training Air Wing - Fixed Wing Fight Training Instruction - primary fiyht raining (fixed winy/ T-34C) - Unurua Atitude Recovery - one sortie (I -2 hours) - pan of Basic Instrument (BI) fight syabus. covers areas reated to unusua autude recovery * using fu and pania pane recovery. insuument scan. FR/ WR transition. inadvenent IMC Figure 74. Initia training (student Nava aviator) fight based SD training (1). In 1993, the rotary-wing side introduced a disorientation fight caed the SD vertigo recovery fight, (figure 75). It s approximatey a 2 hour fight. The students are in a TH-57 in the right seat, with another student in the back. The atter is observing and istening to what s happening, so not ony do they experience it as a piot at the contros, but aso as an observer. This disorientation fight profie in heicopters is the ast fight of the basic instruments syabus. Again, most of the focus is on unusua attitude recovery, but they aso discuss crew coordination and recognition of disorientation. They aso do fu and partia pane recoveries. Initia Training (Student Nava Aviator) Fight based SD training Training Air Wing Heicopter Fight Training Instruction - advanced fight vaininy (mwy wing/ TH-57) - SDNcnigo Recovery (Unusua Attitudes) - one sonic (-2 hours) as piot at contros (PAC) and observer - pan of Basic Instrument (BI) fight syabus. ast fight in BI phase * covers areas reated to SD recognition and recovery * using fu and partia pane recovery * instmmmt scan. IFW VFR transition. inadvenent IMC Figure 75. Initia training (student Nava aviator) fight based SD training (2). The fight instructors aso receive fight based training in SD, as described in figure

65 Instructor training Fight based SD training Training Air Wing Instructor Training Unit Out of Contro Fight (OCF) Syabus - insmucfor fight training (fued wing/ T-34C) - A Fight Instructors - ATS, CCD, ZAD - FAMPAFORMmtn~cton two sorties (2 hours) emphasizing recognition and recovery techniques - Standardion Piots -one smtie (2 hours) Figure 76. Instructor training fight based SD training. The Navy s fight based SD training coud be enhanced (in coaboration with the Army initiatives) so that we cover more prevention and recognition. Fight based SD training for instructors is taiored to the type of instructor, just as is the ground based SD training. A instructors receive training in approach turn stas, cross couped departuresj and zero airspeed departures. The content may need to be improved, but it s hard to add a fight to the training syabus because of the cost of training. Research to support SD training Now I d ike to briefy mention some of the projects that we have to supportraining (figure 77). One of these is the heicopter instrument scan project. We have a device that aows the instructor to actuay monitor where a student is ooking. This is one of the biggest probems - a rea chaenge to instrumentraining. Instructors know how to teach an instrument scan, but a they reay have to assessuccess is performance measures; i.e., how we do they fy? Now we have a mechanism to say how much time they re dweing on certain instruments, and the nature of their scan profie. This research project has been designed to improve instrument scanning by providing feedback on the actua instruments that are being ooked at. Subjects who vounteered for the study were actuay getting better grades, so there was a controversy as to whether they were getting a preferentia advantage. There s no better argumento the success of a program than to actuay demonstrate it whie you re doing the study. Another project we re working on is screening for disorientation-prone individuas. This is something that probaby doesn t account for a ot of SD probems, but the ony test of vestibuar function we screen for is whether you can stand upright with eyes cosed. We ve been ooking at student piots who funked out of instrument training. We found that they very often had some type of ocuar motor tracking probem. So we re trying to find out if there s some means with which we can definitivey assess peope, and maybe we shoud use this as a screening test. 56

66 RESEARCH INITIATIVES TO OVERCOME SD IN THE U.S. NAVY - Heicopter Scan Project - Dr. Temme/ Dr Sti (Vision Department) - Methodoogy to improve instrummt scan by providing feedback on actua instrument scan pattern using an eye movement monitoring system in the heicopter simuator Vestibuar Test Battery - Dr. C&J Dr Rupert (Spatia Oraentation Systems Department) - Deveopment of Vatiburr Test Battery to screen piots susceptibe o SD Figure 77. Research initiatives to overcome SD in the U.S. Navy (1). A few other areas that we re researching to improve aviator training are shown in figure 78. We do computer simuations of mishaps and that in itsef has training vaue. You can t aways provide a video tape of a mishap. Often a you have is a smoking hoe, but we have been abe to recreate mishaps with high end virtua reaity computer graphics. This visuay demonstrates what the piot experienced, and serves as a esson. The vibrotactie orientation suit is described ater. RESEARCH INITIATIVES TO OVERCOME SD IN THE U.S. NAVY Spatia Awareness Program * Dr Rupen (Spatia Orientation Systems Depanment) * Deveopment training paradigms and mishap investiyation toos 10 unpmve spatia orientation and situaion awareness * Vibrotactie Orientation Suit (VTOS) - Dr Rupen/ Dr Raj (Spatia Orientation Systems Department) - Deveopment of an undergarment suit to provide tactie cues to improve sitwation warmess (canh vertica fmm attitude indicator. atitude from RADALT. threat ocation from RWR gear. drift from doppcd GPS) Figure 78. Research initiatives to overcome SD in the U.S. Navy (2). In concusion, I think the areas that we re concerned with are shown in figure 79. To improve the content of our training, we need to add more case based training. In other words, trying to show actua mishap exampes to reinforce the disorientation point. Ceary the timing of our instruction is not we suited to optimize disorientation training. For exampe, the MSDD is done 3 or 4 months before students start basic ground schoo. With regard to training, the MSDD doesn t have any feedback oops, so the piot can t contro anything. That s a deficit in which the USAF ASDD wi probaby be much better. I think the key to this is to shift from a demonstration mode to a training mode. Finay, fight based SD training has got to be embedded into operationa fying or other phases that are aready currenty avaiabe. We re not 57

67 going to have the advantage of saying, Let s add an extra SD fight, it s just too costy. We re going to have to integrate our training syabus into existing fight training. CONCLUSIONS Content - Grand based SD Training (instnrctors and aviators) shift from ecture to case based training Timing - SD Demonsuation device used during basic instrument phase vice cnty eve ony Reaism - Ground based SD devices shift to training device with piot input vice demonstration device ony Cost effective - Fight based SD training embedded into insbument tining and opxationa fying Figure 79. Concusions 58

68 Training initiatives to overcome SD in the USMC Commander Rick Mason gave this presentation. The text and figures are reproduced beow. USMC TRAINING INITIATIVES TO OVERCOME SD IN ROTARY WING OPERATIONS CDRRICKMASON 3DMARINEAIRCRATWING DSN: The best audience is inteigent, we educated, and n itte drunk Wi Rogers Figure 80. Tite - CDR Rick Mason. As far as our ground based training is concerned (figure 81 ), the USMC does much the same as the Navy since we re in the Nava aviation program, The Nava Aviation Physioogy Training Program (NAPTP), is a quadrennia (every 4 years) requirement and our piots have to undergo this training. There is aso an annua instrument ground schoo requirement. For the USMC, there is another requirement to have a physioogist or fight surgeon do a brief on SD. This is mandatory, so it s pretty easy with a reativey sma group of peope in a sma concentrated area to standardize training initiatives and get things going. GROUND BASED TRAINING SAME NAPTP REQUIREMENTS AS USN (PILOTS/AIRCREW) ANNUAL IGS LECTURE (PILOTS) NITE LAB (PILOTS/AIRCREW) FS (SQDN)/AMSO (MAG/MAW) TEAM AVAILABLE TO COMBAT HUMAN FACTORS MISHAPS(PILOTS/AIRCREW) Ignorance doesn t ki you...but it sure mekes you eweor o ot. Haitian proverb Figure 8 1. Ground based training. I think that a big issue that needs to be taked about is making sure that we re optimizing the use of sensors. The USMC has done that through the use of the night ab program, which consists of basic information on the use of NVGs, and as we get into navigationa FLIRS, we start doing that, aso. The Marines have invested a ot in the human factors team. Every 59

69 squadron has a fight surgeon and every Marine Air Group and Marine Air Wing aso have a physioogist acting as an aeromedica safety officer. So for pop-up briefs and in deaing with actua concerns on a day to day basis, there s a pretty good human factors team to address some of these issues. Not just disorientation, but anything ese that is topica. As far as training devices are concerned, we use the Navy s faciities (figure 82). The one thing that we have done, and this is a proof of concept project, is something that we re caing simuator physioogy (simphys). We re taking our didactic training that is currenty done in the cassroom and we re putting it into a simuator case-based scenario. We did a proof of concept with the AH-1 W simuator, where we have instructors come into the cassroom and give piots a fight brief that incudes the choice of four potentia co-piots or wingman to choose from. There are significant eves of human factor and physioogica concerns in their 72 hour histories that they have to find out about. The interesting thing as far as disorientation is concerned, is that we go into the simuators (a 1.5 hour hop), which incudes going out to the boat, both in good and bad conditions as far as sea state is concerned, and oss of visua horizon (so we have the concern for fase horizons and the induction of disorientation). We aso have piots fy inadvertent IMC, which is pretty interesting. That particuar scenario is based exacty on the parameters that occurred in a 1991 mishap where a Cobra section tried to come back via a ground controed approach (GCA), which was unauthorized. Dash 2 just happened to be the Squadron CO, roed inverted and few into the ground. It was absoutey unnecessary. The simuator guys have found out that it is usuay the most experienced guys who go inverted. It wasn t the junior guys, because they woud reaize their imitations, break off and say, Hey, this is beyond my capabiity, whereas the more senior piots woud just try to tuck in tighter and tighter and then they woud go inadvertent IMC. So using the ead aircraft as your point of reference, he disappears and you re in a turn and it s amost subthreshod. By the time the guy reaizes what s going on and transitions to instruments, it s usuay too ate and he s aready roed the aircraft inverted. So that s been a pretty good earning too for us. As a resut of this effort, the squadrons have expressed more interest in trying to get more and more simuator experience for instrument fying and testing. So it may actuay become part of the instrument quaification, which is an airborne demonstration. SD TRAINING DEVICES SAME AS USN SIMULATORS--SIMPHYS Life is tough and it s tougher if you re stupid John Wayne in Satuiv of Iwo Jim Figure 82. SD training devices. 60

70 As far as the evauation and standardization is concerned, our NATOPS jacket, which is our standard training jacket, is a one-stop shop for standardization purposes (figure 83). You can see if the guy has a the training requirements necessary to fy the aircraft on that particuar day. USMC aso has aircrew performance records which govern training and readiness. The USMC has every one of its fights coded. In other words, when you go out on a fight and you perform certain evauations, it counts towards the combat readiness percentage. Every fight, when it goes on the fight schedue, has earning objectives coded into the fight syabus and onto the actua fight schedue. It aows the scheduing department and the operations staff to know exacty where a person is in regard to their training requirements and their proficiency. TRAINING EVALUATION NATOPS JACKET DOCUMENTATION MODEL MANAGER EVALUATIONS COMBAT READINESS PERCENTAGE (TRAINING & READINESS MANUAL) The averageperson thinks he i.sn ~ ~ Father Larry Lmenzoni Figure 83. Training evauation. There s a training and research initiative that is ooking at computerizing persona data so that when a schedue writer puts a person in for a fight, it automaticay fags it and says No, you shoudn t fy this person with that person because of the experience eve you re matching up in the cockpit. So it ooks ike a pretty good risk management too and it shoud hep towards some of the potentia concerns we tak about, particuary crew coordination in regard to disorientation. A of these programs, whether it be aircraft, physioogy, or instrument ground schoo, have mode managers, which I beieve woud be the same thing as the training standardization brigades on Fort Rucker. As far as airborne demonstrations are concerned (figure 84), there is no standard demonstration syabus for any of the type modes. There are maneuver description guides for the various airframes that wi te you how you re supposed to fy various maneuvers, and you re supposed to fy at that eve of proficiency in accordance with the training readiness (T&R) manua requirement. The one thing that the T&R manua does aow for is the buiding bock approach so that you re not going to schedue someone for a hop that they re not ready for. They have buit in-requirements for what we ca turf terrain foowing, which gets down to the nap 61

71 of the earth (NOE) environment. For NVGs, the USMC and the Navy have ight eve differences in the training requirements. AIRBORNE DEMONSTRATIONS NO STANDARD DEMONSTRATIONS MANEUVER DESCRIPTION GUIDE TRAJNINGANDRJZADINESSMANUAL BUILDING-BLOCK APPROACH (TERF & HLL/LLL SYLLABUS Figure 84. Airborne demonstrations. Discussion Session The discussion at this session was transcribed from audio tape. Questions are prefixed by Q, answers by A, and interjected statements by S. S - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. There seem to be training initiatives going on in each of the services. There isn t any great commonaity in those initiatives, but everybody seems to be thinking about how to try to improve things. I hope this symposium has concentrated the minds of those who need to continue to audit training and make improvements. We heard yesterday on the size of the SD probem. It s time to do something about it. I d ike to particuary hear from the fight safety officers and fight surgeons in the audience about what you fee about the current state of training, and how we can make it better not ony at centraized institutions ike the Schoo of Aviation Medicine, but perhaps more importanty out in the unit as part of your refresher training. Q - CPT McMuen. Lt Co1 Braithwaite, you said that the fight surgeons in the U.K. run the SD demonstration sortie and you actuay fy the aircraft at the same time? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Yes, we are quaified piots as we. We have adapted this sortie to demonstrate to the U.S. Army by having an IP do the fying, with a fight surgeon up front conducting the sortie once he s tod the IP what to do next. Q - CPT McMuen. How wi you hande that with Longbow piots? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. We do not intend to fy the sortie in the Apache. It can be done in a sma, generic heicopter. In the U.K., we use the Gazee, at USAARL we are using the UH-1. You need some sort of aircraft where you can get three passengers in the back as we as two crew members up front. 62

72 Q - CPT McMuen. At Fort Hood, we get caed in when piots over-torque their Apaches. They be in a hover doing ive firing or something for a ong period of time, and they get SD, find that they re osing atitude and don t reaize it, or they pu up on the coective too hard and over-torque the aircraft. We re trying to find a way to hep them. Wi the training sortie that you do hep them with this type of probem? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. It wi certainy demonstrate the imitations of their orientationa senses in fight and make them more aware of the situations in which SD wi occur. As I said yesterday during my presentation on the impact of SD, this sort of incident is extremey frequent. I must stress though, that the sortie I described is a demonstration sortie and not a training sortie when the piot is instructed on what to do when SD occurs. That s the IP s responsibiity. The situation you re taking about coud possiby be addressed in simuators. Perhaps we need to start thinking about simuator training programs to show peope that this is a probem in a particuar type of aircraft. Firsty, don t get into that type of situation and secondy, how to overcome it. Q - Cdr Rick Mason. Does anybody have a decent simuator that has brownout or whiteout that ooks reaistic? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. The USAARL UH-60 has brownout. (Ed note: since the symposium, the USAARL UH-60 simuator can now aso simuate whiteout [other UH-60 simuators may aso have the same digita image generation capabiity]). Q - LTC Jeff Hi. Rick (CDR Mason), I have one for you. We had an accident a coupe of years ago invoving an H-60 which hit some wires and a ot of questions were asked about the Air Force tracking NVG hours. How do you track that in the USMC? A - CDR Mason. I m not sure how the Army does it, but when our piots come back and fi out their fight og sheet, they og in NVG, and they are ogging ow-ight eve and high-ight eve. We actuay have two tracking system so just a review of a guy s og book wi te you how many NVG hours he has in ow-ight eve or high-ight eve; pus the T&R manua matrix wi et you know what type of fight he was doing, troop ifts or whatever. Q - CW5 Irwin. I m the Aviation Training Brigade Safety Officer. You mentioned this automated system where your operations person aocates piots to fy missions. A - Cdr Mason. We don t have it yet. It s being ooked at right now at the Harrier community at Yurna. But that s the intent. You put a name into the computer and say, Okay, I want to fy this person with that person, then as you go into that T&R matrix, it wi fag and say, I woudn t fy these two guys together because this person didn t fy this eve hop and hasn t fown one for 9 months - he may be current but he may not be proficient. So, mixing and matching the crews becomes a much easier process. 63

73 Q - CW5 Irwin. But this is something that the system that you re proposing can do, so the commander can go through and start putting in names and a of sudden it wi kick it back out. A - Cdr Mason. Absoutey. Q - CW5 Irwin, Is there a commander s override in this? A - Cdr Mason. The CO is aways going to review the fight schedue. He has to sign it. So he may say, I don t want these two guys to fy together. I haven t seen the program at that eve of detai where you can start putting in squadron imitations as opposed to the imitations governed by the rues and reguations. Q - CW5 Irwin. The reason I mention this is that we ve been working on an automated night risk management system. It s supposed to identify a ot of the cause factors and probem areas and put in contros. I was just wondering if yours is working in conjunction with this or are we both working on something aong two separate tracks. A - Cdr Mason. Is your system based upon your risk management matrix? The USMC abhor the whoe system. They don t want a number teing them they re supposed to go to a certain command eve to authorize the fight. They re not convinced that you can sit there and say that this is going to be a higher risk just based upon numbers, as opposed to experience and gut feeing. I guess CPT Amond can address this more since this is a Nava Safety Center issue. We re getting more into operationa risk management. Q - CW5 Irwin. The next question I ve got is for CPT Cark. You had mentioned earier that you aways pay back the accidents in the simuator. Are a Navy aircraft equipped with fight data recorders? A - Capt Jonathon Cark. No, unfortunatey, ony the newer aircraft, and I think Macom Braithwaite mentioned this earier. The toos, ike the mission data retrieva system, are primariy for the maintenance crews to ook at maintenance cyces for various components: airframe stress, anding cyces, things ike that. That s ony avaiabe on our newer aircraft ike the F- 8 and some of the other ones. No heicopters have that system and very few fixed wing have it. I think as newer things come on ine, this wi be taken into consideration, but its got to serve mutipe purposes. One woud be for the maintenance foks to review the stresses and strains on the airframe. Another woud be to review the fight profie as part of the mission debriefing, and then finay in the worst case scenario that you had a mishap, it woud give you a mechanism to fi in the data points as to what the aircraft did before it impacted. You won t be abe to se it purey as a fight data recorder, it s got to hande maintenance records and mission debriefing. We do mishap recreations based upon known data ike radar data points. The takeoff and anding points on a of our carriers are video taped for that reason. Some of the aircraft have tape recording HUDs, ike the F- 8s. Then we try to give our best guess as to what happened in the mishap and essentiay try to recreate the fight profie. We might fy it in the simuator to fi in some more data points, and then et the computer recreate it, So, they can say, What if 64

74 they were at this attitude? and so on. It aows you to use various parameters to see what might have happened. Then we ook at it perceptuay from what the piots experienced. The Siicon Graphics computer aows you to downoad a visua database of the whoe word from sateite imagery. So you can actuay input the scenery of the oca mishap area. Most of the ones we ve done have been reay impressive. Q - CW5 Irwin. The reason I ask this is because we ve found that the fight data recorder in the UH-60 has been a rea hep in finding out exacty how this guy ost this aircraft. S - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Can I bring this back to training so we can have a break? As we did yesterday when we a agreed that SD has a significant impact upon fight operations. I woud ike to do the same now by saying, Does anyone disagree that reviews and revision of training in SD in a its context, and that s everything from ground ectures, ground based devices, airborne demonstrations, airborne training, review and revision shoud continue? It seems to be happening in most of the services. Are there any dissenters amongst us that woud ike to offer an opinion that everything is fine and we don t need to do anything? (Ed comment: there was no response). Good, et s agree to agree on that, anyway. There is room for triservice cooperation, and I know that USASAM has offered to coordinate a aspects of aeromedica training, but to maintain the impetus improvements must start now within the singe services. I do appreciate the opportunity that we ve had to hear about everyone ese s experienceso we can a earn from each other. There is contacthrough the triservice working group to cross-fertiize ideas, and so on. I ook forward to some improvement. Q - Mr. Mike Moran. One quick question - is there going to be generic recommendations from the tiservice work group? A - Lt Co1 Bra&Waite. Not necessariy. My persona feeing is that we shoud attack the Army SD training within the Army first, and we can gain from the experiences of the other services to hep the ot of aviators within each service. Q - Mr. Bi Ercoine. Since we have some of the experts in training here, I d just ike to get an opinion because USAF is strugging with the frequency of training. Are there any thoughts by the pane members on how often a piot shoud be exposed to refresher training? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. The proposed air standard on physioogica training in SD recommends a 4 year cyce. I drafted this air standard which had a Air Standardization Coordination Committee s curricua, and that was the ongest cyce that peope actuay said that they did refresher training. 65

75 Session 3: Technoogy initiatives to assist spatia orientation in fight Foowing the session on training initiatives, this section addressed the enhancement of the awareness of the nature of SD and predisposing conditions in fight. There are two aspects to be addressed. Firsty, the improvement of the aviator s abiity to perceive and maintain correct spatia orientation in fight; and secondy, to aid recovery to the desired fight parameters, shoud SD occur. To date, the means to maintain orientation when externa visua cues are absent or degraded has been to refer to the standard array of fight instruments and make them read what we want. However, there are probems with this system. The information for correct orientation might be there, but do we attend to it, and does it get to the part of the brain that we want, especiay when there are many other things to which to attend in order to maintain overa situationa awareness? Three presentations were made in this section: Vibrotactie Interface by Dr. Ani Raj, of Nava Aeromedica Research Laboratory, (NAMRI-4 A Nove Instrument Dispay by Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite, USAARL. 3D audio by Dr. Tamara Cheette, Armstrong Laboratories, Wright Paterson AFB. The presentations are not recorded in these proceedings. For further detais, pease contact the authors, who wi be peased to direct the reader to the appropriate pubications. 66

76 Session 4: Cassification of the SD mishap Introduction We heard in the session on the impact of SD on our rotary-wing operations that there was probaby an underestimate of the true representation of the size of the probem because of difficuties in cassification of accidents and incidents.. This fina session is dedicated to examining the different ways of recording the phenomenon as seen by the different services, and then to trying to assist ourseves both within a singe service, but perhaps more importanty, throughout the services. The utimate aim woud be to achieve the foowing: accuratey record the number of accidents in which SD is impicated. thence, compare accidents invoving SD with other accidents in order to determine the particuar patterns associated with SD accidents. and utimatey, to identify areas for further research and contro of the probem. Cassification of the Army SD mishap Lieutenant Coone Ed Murdock gave the foowing presentation. We re going to tak about cassification of Army SD mishaps. In the Army, we do have a code for SD, but how effectivey do we appy it? I did a review of accidents in the Safety Center database from and I was abe to extract 54 SD accidents from that time frame. Lt Co1 Dumford, in a 5 year period ( ), by going through and reading each of the accident reports, cassified 187 accidents as having SD as a major or contributory factor. (Ed note - see Braithwaite Impact of SD on Army Rotary-wing Operations for these definitions). So what I ve reaized is that even though we do have a Safety Center code for SD, there is itte knowedge out in the fied of either recognizing SD, or saying on a mishap investigation board that it shoud be incuded in the summary of one of the findings. This is something that we have not mastered and I need to work on. Fortunatey, I can now go back and pu what we ve coded as SD, ook at what Braithwaite and Durnford have coded, and find out what words I need to use to then extract a these others. I think, as indicated by Lt Co1 Braithwaite, words such as scanning, faiure to scan the fight path and crew coordination are going to be the ones that are going to enabe us to start tapping in to that part of the database that we weren t abe to do before. 67

77 What I d reay ike to present are some of the issues that I m going to be hopefuy addressing about how we address the SD probem in the Army. As I ve just tod you, I don t think right now that we have a hande on it within our database. The information is in the database, the question is being abe to draw it out and then draw concusions as to what we need to do. Firsty, our definition for SD is archaic and we are going to be recommending to USASAM (the proponent for the FM) that we accepthe SD working group s definition. Another issue is that, once we ve identified an accident as being SD by this definition, how wi we cassify the type of SD? I woud ike to ca type 1 unrecognized, type 2 recognized, but type 3 suspected. The first two are simpy a direct ift from the way that Ernsting and King define it in their book on Aviation Medicine in The addition that I want to make is saying type 3 SD is suspected. I fee uncomfortabe with the USAF definition of type 3 SD as being incapacitating. This is just me, and is not to say that this does not match USAF s mission or satisfy their needs, but when I was ooking into the SD probem, I honesty fet that type 3 SD (incapacitating) can be a subset of both type 1 and type 2 SD. The reason being that you find in the references that type 3 is isted as being potentiay recognized or unrecognized. You remember that when Lt Co1 Braithwaite went through the schematic that reates type 1 and type 2 SD, these situations aready fit into the cassification that is recommended by Ernsting and King. LTC Murdock then gave some exampes of type 1 and type 2 SD mishaps. Tvne 1 (unrecognized] Bown grass producing a vection iusion to a heicopter piot who aowed his aircraft to drift from its datum over the ground and then impacted soping terrain. Tvne 2 (recognized1 Faiure to maintain contro of the aircraft during inadvertent entry to IMC. Tvpe 3 (susnected An accident which, for reasons of investigation, can t be cassified as type 1 or type 2 SD. This is normay the case when there is a smoking hoe and no survivors. However, by virtue of a witness statement describing the fight profie, it appeared that there might have been SD. Why does one even have an interest in these type of accidents? Because we need to document those type of accidents where fixes such as fight data recorders might hep to give the investigators more information as to what reay happened. Cassification of the Navy SD mishap Captain Myron Amond gave the foowing presentation. 68

78 I m going to be very mechanica. When I read the outine pan that Lt Co1 Braithwaite produced for this tak, it said How do you cassify SD mishaps in the Navy? That s what I m going to tak about. When the investigation board gets together, what are their options and how do they cassify them? First of a, et s tak about how the Navy investigates mishaps in genera. We use something caed an aircraft mishap board. At east four commissioned officers are on the board. Three of them are from the oca squadron. They have a standing mishap board that trains and is ready to have a mishap investigation. One of them must be NATOPS manua quaified in that specific airframe. The others, in genera, have to be an aviation safety officer, a fight surgeon, and a maintenance and operations officer. The board is augmented by a Nava Safety Center representative. We send someone out on most mishaps, if there s a pane. If it sinks in 50 thousand fathoms of water, we re not going to send somebody out. But if it s a Cass A miion doars or fataity and there s some mechanica wreckage to ook at, to savage, etc., then we send a representative out. This Safety Center officer is not a voting member, but someone who s been to severa mishaps and gives these peope some hep because members of the board may be attending their first mishap. Many fight surgeons wi attend ony one or two mishaps in their whoe career, but the Safety Center representative has been trained and has been to 50 or 60 accidents. He is a direct representative of the Chief of Nava Operations, and owns the wreckage. So it s hepfu to have him there. The senior member of the mishap board has to be an O-5 or above and has to be outside the chain senior to the peope that have crashed. Then the aircraft mishap board submits a mishap investigation report that goes up the chain of command and is endorsed by the Nava Safety Center. So the Safety Center representative, athough non-voting, can say, I woud encourage you to ook at it this way, because when I give my ora pre-brief to the Admira, it s a good chance he s going to agree with me. The aircraft mishap board then comes up with causa factors for each and every mishap. They re divided broady into human causa factors and materie causa factors. For each and every accepted causa factor, this is the structure that s used. Who? Specificay, either personne or equipment. What? The actions or events that happened. why? Who, what and why? In the Nava Aviation Safety Program book, (which is about to be revised) there is a menu at appendix L. They ca it an exhaustive menu of a the whos, whats and whys that can be used. In the who section, everyone can be incuded, but there s ony certain whats you can use. And then there s a bunch of whys. But you ve got to pick out one of those whys. You can t just make up your own why. 69

79 The whos can be aircrew, supervisory, faciities, or maintenance. Of course in our context, we re taking about aircrew being in the who category for the SD mishap. What? If you ook under what happened and things that appy to the SD context, you see a ist of about 20 things. But they a basicay go ike this: they misjudged the cosure rate, the atitude above the ground, the distance between aircraft, andings on cearance misjudgment, anding ro out distance, etc. There s about 10 others, but they a have to do with misjudgment. So who?, the aircrew; what?, misjudged something, which of course ended up in a mishap. They had a mid-air, or they ran into the ground, or something. And then, why? You can assign a ot of whys. But the whys that we are taking about are not communication, coordination, psychosocia, environment, performance, or human engineering, but medica and physioogica. So why? Because of some medica and/or physioogic probem. Then if you ook under the medica and physioogica area of the menus (again this is very agorithmic), you find things ike acute effects of a cod, or chronic effects. Further on, you see vestibuar iusions, other types of iusions and then SD, recognized or unrecognized. So in theory, it woud be very easy to go to our database and ook for just whys and find a the ones that have SD recognized or unrecognized, because those are the ony words that can be used in the Nava Safety Center s database to describe what we re taking about. However, basicay you see who. Human error was made by the supervisor or the aircrew, or the materie and maintenance. This is very good at describing who made the human error. But if you go back into that database and try to pu out a the SD heicopter mishaps for the ast 6 years, you find zero, when in fact there were at east three and perhaps four and five that we found other ways. This is primariy because the why has not been coded we. We have an aternative that we have started using during the ast 6 months. We deveoped a database, or more precisey, a human error mode. The database is not officia, it s just a survey we ve done and have presented in many paces. In that database, aeromedica comes under unsafe aircrew conditions. What we ve done is for every one of those causa factors, who, what and why, is to create a bunch of whys. Each one of those causa factors has been ooked at by mutipe psychoogists and the anaysts for that particuar airframe who said that this is the type of human error that was invoved here. When reviewed by other peope, they have been abe to say that the aircraft crashed because of this who, what, and why. So, et s interpret that in this mode s context and come up with a causa factor based on the human error mode. The mode has been proposed by Reason, Chappe, and Wigman, peope that have a ot of knowedge in this area. When we use this mode to cassify the accidents, 27 percent of a the 102 mishaps invoved aeromedica factors. We can then pick out the SD accidents. 70

80 Cassification of the USAF SD mishap Mr. Bi Ercoine gave the foowing presentation. CLASSIFICATION OF THE USAF SD MISHAP BILL ERCOLINE SYSTEMS RESEARCH LABORA TORIES ARMSTRONG LABORATORY SPATIAL DISORIENTATION COUNTERMEASURES TASK BROOKS AFB. TX SD in the Operatmna Rotary Wing Environmm for the USASAM Sep 96 Figure 85. Tite - Bi Ercoine. I coud summarize this presentation by saying that in the USAF, a mishap gets abeed as SD providing two things occur. The first is that the investigating fight surgeon has the knowedge and can then recognize that he s deaing with an SD mishap. Second, he must og his finding on the mishap form, the 7 11 ga. Then it becomes an SD mishap. It s not easy for both of these events to occur. The first is dependent on knowedge, and the second can become a poitica issue; the fight surgeon has to convince the rest of the investigation board. That can be an interesting time for some fight surgeons. It s not just a matter of checking the box. We don t a perceive iusions in the same way. This in itsef contributes to the cassification issue. (Mr. Ercoine then presented two visua iusions and demonstrated the difficuty of interpretation.) We may a agree that something is an iusion, but when it becomes margina, we then have a probem because it may not be a visua iusion to two peope. Hence, a cassification probem. It s often tough to propery define an iusion, particuary in words. It is even possibe to condition yoursef that it doesn t become an iusion on subsequent occasions. Mr. Ercoine then reated his first persona encounter with SD, and emphasized that a persona incident reay brings home the probem of SD to an aviator. I tak a itte about some of the cassification issues, some of the historica work that has been done, and how peope have viewed SD in the past. This issue has been around for a ong time and we re sti strugging with it. 71

81 *oo \ BACKGROUND MAJOR AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS Figure 86. Major aircraft accidents. We can ook back at mishap rates since the American Services started to fy (figure 86). You can see how we we ve earned to fy airpanes. Around 1926, Wiiam Ocker invented the Ocker Box, which showed how you coud be disoriented. This was termed piot vertigo. In the 1950s we started caing it SD. Good instrument training began around Word War II and the mishap rate fe. Overa, the accident rate decreased by 95 percent from the 1920s to the 1950s (from 700 mishaps per 100,000 fying hours to 36). The Air Force Safety Center then thought we woudn t match this dramatic decrease again, but when you cacuate the reduction from the 1950s to now, we have had a further 96 percent decrease. The safety record is reay quite remarkabe. The mishap rate is now down to between 1 and 2 accidents per 100,000 fying hours. There s a ot of good being done, but we don t want to overook the issue of SD. Because of the improved overa safety record, we often overook the SD issue. It doesn t reay hit home unti you re a member of the accident board. BACKGROUND SD STUDIES A&X5 YeUS - SD% of Tota Barnum & Bonncr (USAF) Moser (ADC) Kirkham et a (US Civ) I%&1975 Beienka et a (USN) Vymwy-Jones (USA) Singh & Navath (Indian AF) Hoand (USAF) Lyons a II (USAF) 199&1991 6% 9% 2.5% 5%,4% 2.5% 12% 14% Figure 87. SD studies. Figure 87 iustrates some SD studies. There have been more, but these are the ones that Co1 Lyons and I -went through. In Kirkham s civiian study, SD was the third eading cause of mishaps. The second eading cause in that study was fight continued into weather conditions (around 4 percent). 72

82 The variation of the incidence of SD over the years has been very dependent on the definition. For exampe, Barnum and Bonner defined SD as a state of confusion (figure 88). This is stricty recognized SD, where the piot has to be confused and has been aerted to his state. Lyons, et a-used a definition which incuded an erroneous sense which coud be no sense at a. In other words, this incuded unrecognized SD. So maybe because of the change in definition, we re ooking at more numbers. * Barnum &Bonner BACKGROUND SD DEFINITION SD -- a state of confusion concerning the airman s true position in space with reference to the earth s surface or other airborne objects - Lyons. et a SD -- a state characterized by an erroneous sense of one s position and motion reative to the pane of the earth s surface Figure 88. SD definition. Figure 89 is an excerpt from the 7 11 ga. The top part is the 1976 version, and the bottom is what we ve had since In the 1976 form, the fight surgeon coud ony check the SD/vertigo box and rate it as definitey, contributed or suspected. Nowadays, we have just inserted SD types I, II and III under sensory and perceptua factors. If the fight surgeon does not put in the code for SD, it wi not be an SD mishap. How we the form is competed is very important. We know that there are SD mishaps that haven t been propery coded. 73

83 Excerpt from AF FORM 711gA. Aug 89 Figure 89. Excerpt from AF FORM 71 ga, Sep 76. Figure 90 iustrates the statistics over the years for a USAF Cass A mishaps. The SD rate has gone down from 0.35 to It tes us that for every 500,000 fight hours, we re going to have 1 SD mishap. The USAF fies about 2 miion hours a year, so they re going to ose 4 airpanes due to SD. DATA/STATISTICS USAF SD CLASS A MISHAPS Figure 90. USAF SD Cass A mishaps. The tota accident rate is going down (figure 91), and though the SD rate doesn t decine as quicky, it aso is going down. If one extrapoates the data, the graph wi hit the zero ine at about So is SD sti a probem? I think most of us fee that it is. 74

84 DATA/STATISTICS Mishaps per 100,000 Fying Hours Figure 9 1. Mishaps per 100,000 fying hours. Figure 92 shows that the average cost in resources (not ives) is high. DATA/STATISTICS Average Cost of a USAF SD Cass A Mishap 30. ia Camdar Year Figure 92. Average cost of a USAF SD Cass A mishap. Figure 93 gives the rotary-wing numbers from the data that we have. We ooked in the 711gA at sensory and perceptua factors graded at 3 or 4 ( essentiay those that contributed significanty to the mishap). There are so few mishaps because we don t have a ot of heicopters. 75

85 DATA/STATISTICS USAF ROTARY WING CLASS A RESULTS (OCT (LSNOV 95) A aircraft: 15 I coded sensory and perceptua factors (3 or 4) Heicopters: 8 coded sensory and perceptua factors (3 or 4) 3 of 8 coded SD, 5 not coded SD - 2-Visua Acquisition - I-Auditory Cues - 1 -Geographic Disorientation * I-Misperceptm of Speed Figure 93. USAF rotary-wing Cass A resuts In surnrnary (figure 94), perhaps the cassification issue can be soved with an agreed SD definition. One is ong overdue. SD mishap rates are decreasing, and it is easy to surmise that we are doing a better job. However, I urge caution. We are fying fewer hours. The reationship between tota hours fown and the number of SD mishaps has never been estabished. It shoud not surprise anyone to find the reationship non-inear. We do know that SD is sti a kier. The SD Countermeasures Group of the USAF fees that SD is the singe most important cause of piot reated accidents. There is reason to suspect that it aso has an impact on fight performance in genera. SUMMARY - SD Definition Remains a Cagification Issue - SD/Mishap Rates are Decreasing - Actua Impact of SD Unknown * SD is Sti a Kier Figure 94. Summary. 76

86 Discussion session The discussion at this session was transcribed from audio tape. Questions are prefixed by Q, answers by A, and interjected statements by S. Q - Unidentified (presumaby an Army attendee). I have had a Navy crash happen near to me. Can we have a point of contact for sister service mishaps? A - Lt Co1 Neubauer. For the Air Force, ca the safety offrce of the nearest AFB and they wi mount a response to the accident. A - LTC Murdock. The Army Safety Center has a 24 hour number. If you ca us, our operations peope can notify other services. Q - Capt Amond. For the Air Force - When you tak about a mishap that may have mutipe factors and SD is one of them, but crew response management (CRM) and other things might aso be invoved. Is that how you define that at east one of the causa factors is SD? A - Mr. Bi Ercoine. That s correct. If one of the checked factors is SD, then it becomes an SD mishap. That s easier said than done, that s the probem. It can get ost in the other causa factors. It bois down to understanding of the probem, and a wiingness to recognize that it s SD. A ot of times, if you get into the detais of CRM, they may not want to cassify it as an SD mishap. Q - CPT McMuen. For the Air Force - you say that your rates have gone down. Just as a simpistic overview of a number of the cases that we ve taked about, it seems that in many cases there was ceary either ack of knowedge, or adherence to standards in terms of what the piot shoud or shoud not have been doing. Have there been stricter means of enforcing those standards or better ways of educating the piots so they know what their standards are? An exampe is where SD came about because the piots vioated the standards that they shoud have been foowing. A - Mr. Bi Ercoine. If you foow procedures, more than ikey you re not going to become a Cass A mishap, not just the reguation procedures, but aso fight technique procedures. So there are intentiona vioations (ike disregarding reguations), and then there is the situation where you think you are doing something correcty and the aircraft is not behaving propery (for exampe, you wish to set 10 degrees nose up to cimb out, but because of other things going on, you fet you did it but didn t cross check - that s SD). A - Lt Co1 Neubauer. In the USAF there is aso sow transition to being smarter about where and when we fy. A can do attitude may not be the attitude to have in every case. We re now aowing a ot more peope to back out of things that may not be as safe as they think. 77

87 Q - Mr. Bi Ramsey. For the Air Force - have you had any accidents from SD due to poor cockpit design; e.g., radios in the wrong pace (ike the OH-58 transponder). A - Mr. Bi -Ercoine. We had a piot who misinterpreted HUD symboogy after being headdown in the cockpit, and roed the aircraft the wrong way. Another exampe, but one where the piot died, so we can t be certain: he was making a turn with his head down in the cockpit, and for some reason the airpane ended up inverted on the ground. In the attitude symboogy the bue (of the sky) remained at pitch nose down of greater than 30 degrees. The numbers change but are very hard to read and the coor dispay freezes. So the picture of degrees noseow ooks the same as about 30 degrees nose-ow. In a high workoad, you miss the numbers. We ve aways fet that to sove SD, two things have to be done. You have to have good training, both ground and fight; and second, you have to design symboogy propery because we re visuay dominant. 78

88 A proposed SD mishap investigation annex During the ast part of this session, Lt Co1 Macom Braithwaite presented a proposed SD mishap investigation annex. We have seen the variabiity of cassification of SD accidents between the three safety centers. A speakers have agreed that it woud be most usefu to standardize cassification so that the true size of the probem and a proper comparison can be made, and that contros can be identified to imit the impact of SD in the future. This is one of the thorniest probems in the operationa management of SD, and one which has vexed both the Triservice Working Group (TWG) on SD, and Working Party 61 (WP 61) of the Air Standardization Coordination Committee for many years. Even within a service, there is often itte correation between the opinion of operationa and aeromedica staff who investigate and report on accidents, and there is certainy a probem between nations. So, what can we do about it? Rather than suggest a change to nation s and service s cassification (which is unikey to happen), we at both the TWG and WP 61 thought that it woud be more reasonabe to add to the cassification process for mishaps in which SD was considered to be a factor. It has been heard from severa speakers that if one doesn t go ooking for SD, it won t be found, so we need something to hep us. It woud be an advantage if we coud devise a deductive agorithm, one that coud be foowed and get the answer SD at the end. But because SD is so mutifaceted, this is a very difficut task. Therefore, the format that has been devised is more of a checkist. It starts by asking the question coud SD be a factor in this mishap? So, the definition is important, and I hope we ve come to a better understanding of that in the ast 48 hours. The form has been proposed as an annex for the investigation of mishaps and incidents not eading to mishaps, but exacty who shoud use it can be discussed foowing some. famiiarization with it. Whie the document is changing, it has been kept as a consecutive ist of questions. This is reproduced at appendix E. Once finaized, it wi be made into a proper agorithm, or computerized. Many of the things that we have proposed as important wi be recognized, as the annex was originay drawn from Durnford s and my work at USAARL. There are some references to fixed wing aircraft in it because it is designed to cover a types of aircraft. Attendees at the symposium were then divided into syndicates and practiced competing the proposed annex using exampes provided. 79

89 Discussion session The discussion at this session was transcribed from audio tape. Questions are prefixed by Q, answers by A, and interjected statements by S. Q - MAJ Tom Greig. With reference to the question on type 1 or type 2 SD. If SD is present in an accident, wi it ever be anything but type 1? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Remember the dynamics of SD. One can start off with an awareness of conficting inputs of orientation (type 2 SD), and rather than overcoming the confict, base one s contro of the aircraft on the fase perception and so ead to an accident. This path to an accident is ess frequent than type 1, but is possibe. Q - Mr. Larry Boshiers. I fet this was a usefu too. Coud we use the same approach in mission panning (ike risk assessment)? A - Lt Co1 Hi. The MEJSA mode that I described does just this. Q - Dr. Tamara Cheette. I think you shoud move question 1, Coud SD be a factor in this mishap or incident to the very end. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. That s attempting to make the form deductive. Q - Dr. Tamara Cheette. Right, the whoe form is a sort of thought-channeing process, a decision tree that eads you through a set of decisions. For exampe, Were they wrong about the atitude, airspeed or power?, eading to a possibe concusion that they were spatiay disoriented. This form asks someone to make that decision up front before they have examined any of the other thought processes. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. The reason that we have this question at the beginning is that I don t beieve that this is a proper decision making tree, and the form is not totay deductive. At the moment, it serves as a checkist of information. Even if it is considered that SD is ony an incidenta factor, this checkist shoud be competed. A - Sqn Ldr Maidment. The reason that this question was paced at the beginning is that it is foreseen that this annex woud be competed by the fight surgeon at the accident site. He s aready going to be competing a very arge form and we didn t want to be overoading him with nugatory paperwork if SD is ceary not a factor. Perhaps question 3: What was the roe of SD in this mishap or incident? shoud be moved to the end of the form. A - Mr. Bi Ercoine. I agree. Gather the facts and then make a decision. Q - Dr. Tar-mu-a Cheette. Maybe you coud just rephrase question 1: Was SD ceary NOT a factor in this accident? 80

90 A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Good idea. We tak about that at the SD TWG. Q - Lt Co1 Hi. Question 5: How woud you cassify the SD that payed a roe in this mishap or incident? forces me to make a choice. Maybe a more appropriate aternative woud be, Do you think type 1 SD is a contributor?, Do you think type 2 SD is a contributor? An exampe might be where I enter an unrecognized SD condition, and I convert that to type 2 as I bust through the coud ayer and try to take evasive action, but it doesn t happen. I think I coud have a case where I have both invoved. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Thank you. We take that point on board. S - MAJ Keith Steinhurst. I think it s a great idea. The whoe point of this forum is to determine whether we re doing enough as fight surgeons to make this issue of SD a itte higher for the command to consider. We had a good discussion in our syndicate group over the different attitudes that different peope on the board might have about what the crew were doing or not doing when they impacted the ground. For me, this approach is reay good. The order of the questions shoud probaby take a back seat to the fact that we re actuay trying to do something. S - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Thank you for that very positive comment, Keith. Q - Unidentified. How do you estimate how ong the aircrew were disoriented? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Ony if you can ask them, or accuratey reconstruct the accident. Q - Unidentified. I think there shoud be more space for additiona comments. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. I agree. To save trees, the present outine is a skeeton format. S - Lt Co1 Bra&Waite. Let s try to tie this together. Are we a agreed that this is a good idea? (Ed. response was yes, with no dissenters). So, do we fied it, to whom, and through whom? You are the experts from the safety centers and fight surgeons from the fied. Pease advise me. Q - Unidentified. What are you going to do with the information when you ve got it? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. I woud suggest feeding the competed forms back to the safety center surgeons. I ook to my coeagues to agree or otherwise. Q - Mr. Bi Ercoine. There s a ot of things that can be done with this. You can go back to the equipment manufacturers and show where there are deficient areas of symboogy. There are things to be changed in the cockpit. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. I competey agree with you, Bi. I said in my introduction that we need to accuratey get the number of accidents in which SD is impicated so that we can compare them 81

91 with other accidents and then address future operationa research, technica contros, and so on. Before that, somebody has got to get the information in the first pace. I woud suggest that the first point of coation is the safety center surgeon. Any objection to that? Q - Lt Co1 Mason. If SD is an issue, it shoudn t be hidden in our aeromedica anaysis. It shoud be a finding and a recommendation of the board, perhaps isted that SD is a primary causa factor or contributing factor within the report itsef. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. I quite agree, but as we have seen, if we just rey on the board s report we re not going to have a that other usefu information. For exampe, Was there an iusion, was there deficiency of visua cues, and what can we do about it? So a the information that we re coecting needs to be coated and then disseminated in perhaps a simiar fashion to the way in which we have been anayzing the accidents ong after they have occurred. Q - Lt Co1 Mason. One of the probems we re having is that we have very arge databases that don t accuratey refect what s going on out there with regard to SD. If this proposed checkist were to end up in the board s fina report, then it s going to show up in the database. It won t have the detai, but at east it wi indicate that there was an issue. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Right, but if we re going to fied an annex ike this, we need to get the information back from it, and this is my point. Does the investigating fight surgeon compete it? I woud suggest so. He woud then send the report forward to the safety center surgeon for coation. Q - Lt Co1 Mason. Captain Amond, do you find times that the aeromedica anaysis (AA) contradicts what is in the actua mishap investigation report (MIR)? A - Capt Amond. In the book it says that the aeromedica causa factors shoud be the same as those in the officia MIR. That s been my experience in the ast 3 years. The AA is just a refection. It expands and discusses the human factor areas in detai, but the same who, what, and why criteria are used. If the fight surgeon can t convince the rest of the board members that SD was a causa factor, then I m not sure it was. S - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. We don t seem to be in a decision-making mood at the moment. Perhaps this is not the correct forum to discuss administrative issues. S - Lt Co1 Neubauer. In the USAF, the ife sciences report originates in the safety center. We change it and do whatever we want with it. So if this annex were fieded, we woud incorporate it into our report format that we send out to a the fight surgeons, and have written into reguation, etc. In our forms, we aready have many human factors aspects that are aso covered in the proposed annex. A job that certainy fas on me is to try to deveop a she over some of the 300 or so human factors that we have isted so that we can say that this gob of human factors is indeed SD. In other words, not eave it to the fight surgeon at the scene, but eave it to us as we code it into the database so that it becomes an SD accident. 82

92 Q - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Are you suggesting that you shoud be the one to compete the annex? A - Lt Co1 Neubauer. My comment about coding was an aside, not taking about the annex itsef No, if we are going to use the annex, the fight surgeon at the scene shoud compete it, and when it comes back to us it gets put into the computer. I m aso suggesting, that at east in the USAF s ream, instead of just a ist of human factors, we need to deveop pointers to SD without somebody at the accident saying This was or was not SD. Q - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. That s the USAF s own taxonomy probem? A - Lt Co1 Neubauer. Yes. Q - Mr. Larry Boshiers. I think this is an exceent idea. I woud request that, however, you in the miitary choose to institute this into accident investigation, and however you recover the information, don t keep it to yourseves, as SD is not just a miitary probem. In the civiian environment, we have more piots than a of you put together, and we woud benefit from any kind of information that you coud gain. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. You say that you might benefit. There is no reason why you shoud not contribute either. S - Mr. Larry Boshiers. That s correct. My intent was to get together with Steve Verroneau and show him the annex and get him to contact you. Q - Mr. Mike Moran. I think that we a agree that the rotary-wing SD issues are unique, regardess of service. My proposa is that the three safety centers pu together with a joint working group to come up with an annex that a three services can ive with for investigating rotary-wing mishaps that invove SD. As a trainer, I see three services with three different exicons ooking at the probem from three different points of view. This is part of our probem. If the services can come up with a joint resoution, then I, as a trainer, can hep you come up with joint training to train your investigators to ook at the probem. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Thank you, that is a usefu comment which is eading into the fina wrap-up. Are there any further comments on the proposed annex at the moment? My persona feeing is that once we have a fina version of this annex approved by the three services, then we shoud fied it through safety center surgeons down to the fied fight surgeons who wi compete it at the next few accidents and then return it to the safety center. Can this be done in parae to the norma accident investigation procedure. 3 In other words, a sort of fied tria of the annex. (Ed note. There were assenting remarks from the Navy and Air Force Safety Surgeons, and from one of the Army Safety Center staff on behaf of LTC Murdock). Thank you, uness there are any further comments on the annex, et s try and draw things together. (Ed note. The fina discussion is recorded under the next section). 83

93 Fina discussion Lt Co1 Braithwaite made the foowing remarks before the fina discussion. We ve spent a coupe of days on SD and I m sure it s been a ong time since this topic was considered by so many in one pace. I appreciate a of you coming, and particuary the efforts that our speakers have made to hep make this symposium successfu. We have agreed that the impact of SD on rotary-wing operations is significant, and that we shoud do more about it. My brief when I was asked to chair this symposium was to determine what needs doing, how it needs doing, and when we are going to do it. We shoudn t just go back to our units and agree to meet next year without anything happening in the interim. I need your hep to find the appropriate direction. We ve taked about training. There is an overa initiative to try and standardize initia entry aeromedica training throughout the services. I suggest that SD training can therefore be covered within the forum of overa aeromedica training. I reaize that there are constraints with the good ideas that we may put forward, such as money, manpower, aircraft hours, etc., but I don t fee that shoud deter us at this stage from what we re trying to do to. The fisca aspects can be singe service issues once we have a triservice agreement and recommendations on the way ahead. How do we go forward? A vehice does exist for triservice cooperation in SD. This is the TWG which is part of the Triservice Aeromedica Research Pane (TARP). The TWG, to date, has primariy been a means to discuss areas of research so that we minimize overap and cooperate. However, within the charter of the TWG is the abiity for the chairman to set up subgroups to address a particuar probem. There is no reason why other non-twg personne cannot be co-opted into a sub-group. So, I propose that the TWG shoud be tasked either by themseves, the TARP, or even the Commander of the Army Safety Center to deveop the concusions that we ve come to in this symposium, find the common ground, and make recommendations that can be impemented on a triservice basis. These woud incude enhancing the awareness of SD to the commanders who make the decisions, training and data coection from mishaps. Do we agree that this is the way forward or woud anyone ike to suggest an aternative approach? (Ed note. There was no aternative response to this suggestion). Good, I m gad we a agree that this is a good idea. Brigadier Genera Konitzer, the Commander of the Army Safety Center is the most important officer that has been concerned with this symposium. I woud ike to ask him to forward a memorandum to the aviation brigades and perhaps his opposite number in the Navy and Air Force Safety Centers. The document woud summarize the issues raised at the symposium, which issues shoud be addressed on a triservice basis, and direct the TWG to address the issues and report back to him within a defined time period. That is my proposa. Remember that we are a coective body and that we have been considering the probem of SD together. Does anyone object to this pan of action? Q - Mr. BiErcoine. I think everything you re suggesting, and this symposium, has been exceent. I think most of us have gotten something out of it. I m just concerned that if you address just rotary-wing issues, we re going to miss a ot of the probems that are sti out there. 84

94 So I woud suggest that if you get that kind of attention, do it now to get it right. We ve been underestimating this piot kier for 70 years. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. I hear what you say, Bi, and it woud be good to catch everything. I think that, at present, I must have persona oyaty and reiterate that the Army s main interest is the heicopter environment. We have got them together on a rotary-wing theme and I woudn t want to diute the issue to our primary customer. There is no reason why some of the rotarywing aspects cannot be appied to fixed wing. After a, the accident investigation annex was designed for both types of aircraft. I woudn t want to make the issues too big so that we can t tacke it within the next 12 months. So, a bite at a time, rotary-wing first, and hopefuy the fixed wing aspects wi easiy foow. S - LTC Toomey. Most of the training manuas that we use tend to iustrate SD in the fixed wing environment. The perception is that in a heicopter, you are fying ow and sow and you can t be disoriented. This symposium has iustrated that this is not the case and hasn t been so for some time. If the TWG were to focus on the rotary-wing probems, it may stimuate some thought from the fixed wing arena, but there s aready a great dea of work being done there whie there s none here except for the oca effort. I think that s another reason to focus on one sma area at first. Q - LTC Richard Carter. Is one of your proposas to use the British Army SD demonstration sortie that you described? A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. At present, I am just assessing the usefuness of this sortie for the U.S. Army. I hope it wi become a recommendation to improve aircrew aeromedica training in SD. Q - LTC Carter. Who is it that sets standards for quaification? Our training center meets Army standards for IPs. I know of no requirement for IPs to have any in-fight SD training such as you are suggesting. I think it is reasonabe to propose that they have it, but I am not sure who makes the written reguations to say that an IP course must incude a certain standard to be met. A - Lt Co1 Braithwaite. Woud you ike to take the first task of the TWG subgroup, and find out and et me know, and then we can address that shoud it become an agreed recommendation with action to that particuar office. A - LTC Carter. We can do that. There being no further comments from the foor, Lt Co1 Braithwaite concuded with the foowing remarks. That s a I have to say. Thank you to our speakers and to you for attending. I hope that you have gotten a ot out of the symposium. We wi pubish the proceedings of this symposium and produce a memorandum to the Commander of the Army Safety Center. Remember though, that 85

95 there is no reason why you shoudn t take what you have gained from the ast 2 days straight back to you units and start appying the principes in your own oca fashion. -. Cosing address The symposium was cosed by an address from CW4 (ret) Michae Novose, Congressiona Meda of Honor winner. The text is not recorded in these proceedings. 86

96 Annendix A: List of svmnosium attendees CAPT Myron D. Amond Nava Safety Center Norfok, VA CW4 Robert P. Antoskow HHC Aviation Training Brigade Fort Rucker, AL COL Wade D. Badwin U.S. Army Aeromedica Activity Fort Rucker, AL CPT Larry D. Barthoomew Eastern ARNG Aviation Training Site Fort Indiantown Gap Annvie, PA DSN x7228 Fax DSN DSN Comm (334) DSN Comm (334) DSN Comm (717) Fax (717) LtCo OR H. ten Berge Netherands Liaison Officer Fort Rucker, AL Larry M. Boshers Mike Monroney Aeronautica Center Okahoma City, OK Lt Co1 Macom G. Braithwaite USAARL Fort Rucker AL CPT Austin W. Burgess Tutte Army Heath Cinic Hunter AAF, GA MAJ John Campbe U.S. Army Schoo of Aviation Medicine Fort Rucker,AL Comm (405) Fax (405) arry_boshers@mmacmaii. jccbi.gov DSN Comm (334) Fax (334) Braithwaite@rucker-EMH2.ARMY.MIL Comm (912) Fax (912) DSN Comm (334) Fax (334) A-

97 LTC Richard M. Carter Aeromedica Division Western ARNG Aviation Trairiing Site Marana, AZ CPT Richard F. Chadek HHC /10 Cavary Fort Hood, TX Dr. Tamara L. Cheette ALKFBS, Buiding Monahan Way Wright Patterson AFB, OH CAPT Jonathan Cark NAMRL Code Hovey Road Pensacoa, FL CPT Katherine L. Czarnic 224 MI Battaion Hunter AAF, GA Wiiam R. Ercoine ALKFTF (SRL) Brooks AFB, TX MAJ Thomas W. Greig Aviation Troop Medica Cinic Mt Bevedere Bvd Fort Drum, NY LtCo Jeffrey R. Hi 16 OSS/SGT 226 Terry Avenue Hurburt Fied, FL CW5 Eare C. Irwin HQ, Aviation Training Brigade ATTN ATZQ-ATB-SA Fort Rucker,AL DSN x4528 Fax (602) DSN Con-m (8 17) Fax (8 17) DSN Fax DSN tcheette@a.wpafb.af.mi DSN Comm (904) Fax (904) jcark@acce.namr.navy.mi DSN Comm (912) Fax (912) DSN Comm t210) I Fax (210) DSN Comm (3 15) Fax (3 15) greigt@drum-emh.army.mi DSN Comrn (904) Fax (904) jeff.hi@hurburt.af.mi DSN Comm (334) /2564 Fax (334) eare_irwin@rucker-emh4.army.mi A-2

98 CW2 Joan D. Jackson Fight Detachment, JRTC Fort Pok, LA LtCo James C. Johnson 9700 G Avenue STE 2700 K&and AFB, NM CW5 Robert S. Johnson Aviation Branch Safety Office Buiding 115 Fort Rucker, AL Co1 Ed Murdock U.S. Army Safety Center Fort Rucker, AL CDR John M. Laurent NAMRL Pensacoa, FL Ben D. Lawson NAMRL Pensacoa, FL CPT Sean K. Lee HHC 82d Aviation Brigade Fort Bragg, NC Dwight Lindsey U.S. Arrriy Safety Center Fort Rucker, AL Comm (318) DSN Comm (505) Fax (505) johnsoja@smtps.saia.af.mi DSN /1993 Comm (334) /1993 Fax (334) DSN Comm (334) DSN Comm (904) jaurent@acce.namr.navy.mi Comm (904) Fax (904) bawson@acce.namr.navy.mi DSN Comm (910) DSN Comm (334) Fax (334) indseyd@rucker-safety.army.mi MAJ Geoffrey C. Lucas U.S. Army Safety Center Fort Rucker, AL CW5 Bradey R. Lupien HHC, Aviation Brigade Hunter AAF, GA DSN Comm (912) afzp-vx-sa@stewart-emh3.army.mi A-3

99 Sqn Ldr Graeme Maidment ALKFTF Brooks AFB, TX CDR Rick P. Mason CG3dMAW, ATTN: DOSS P.O. Box 99000, MCAS E Toro Santa Ana, CA CPT Kevin P. McMuen HHT, 4th Bde, ICD Fort Hood, TX CW2 Sean E. McNea HHC USAG Fight Detachment Fort Pok, LA LT Andrew M. Mead NAMRL Pensacoa, FL Mr. Bruce R. Neson Army Medica Department Center and Schoo Fort Sam Houston, TX Harod (Dae) Neson Civi Aeromedica Institute Aeromedica Education Division-AAM- P.O. Box Okahoma City, OK LtCo Jay C. Neubauer HQ AFSCISEFL 9700 G Avenue SE K&and AFB, NM CPT Eric W. Oins HHT 4/3 ACR Troop Medica Cinic #3 Fort Carson,CO DSN Fax DSN DSN Fax DSN mason@pendeton.usmc.mi DSN Corm-n (8 17) Fax (8 17) DSN Comm (318) Fax (318) DSN Comm (904) Fax DSN amead@acce.namr.navy.mi DSN Comm (210) Fax (210) Comm (405) Fax (405) DSN Fax DSN neubauej@smtps.saia.af.mi DSN Comm (719) Fax (719) A-4

100 CW2 James F. Perry NAMRL, Pensacoa, FL Comm (904) Ani K. Raj -. Code 22, NAMRL 5 1 Hovey Road Pensacoa, FL CWS Wiiam H. Ramsey U.S. Army Safety Center Fort Rucker, AL Raph R. Rein1 Aviation Training Brigade Standards Fort Rucker, AL Capt Yvonne Severs 1133 Sheppard Avenue West North York, Ontario, Canada M3M2V3 CW4 John S. Smoka Department of Evauation & Standardization cargo/f w Fort Rucker, AL MAJ Keith N. Steinhurst Darna Army Community Hospita Fort Hood, TX LTC Ronad H. Teufe Eastern ARNG Aviation Training Site Annvie, PA SGT Ann M. Zetti Eastern ARNG Aviation Training Site Annvie, PS DSN Fax DSN araj@acce.namr.navy.mi DSN Comm (334) Fax (334) ramseyw@rucker-safety.army.mi DSN Comm (334) Comm (416) Fax (416) yvonne.severs@dciem.dnd.ca DSN Comm (334) Fax (334) DSN Comm (8 17) Fax (817) DSN Corm-n (7}7) Fax (717) DSN Cornm (717) Fax (717) A-5

101 Appendix B: Introductory remarks about sneakers Lieutenant Coone Ed Murdock Lieutenant Coone Ed Murdock is a former Air Defense officer who the gained an M.D. fron the Uniformed Services University in After internship, he quaified as an Army fight surgeon and ater received a master of pubic heath degree from Johns Hopkins University. He then became board certified in aerospace medicine in He is once again the Command Surgeon for the U.S. Army Safety Center. During his previous tour in this post, he researched SD and was one of the key presenters at the Pensacoa conference in He has aso presented his work on SD at Aerospace Medica Association meetings. Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite Lieutenant Coone Macom Braithwaite is a consutant in Aviation and Occupationa Medicine. In common with a British Army fight surgeons, he is aso a rated aviator. He has speciaized in aviation medicine since 1981 and hed operationa and research posts in the United Kingdom and Germany. His responsibiities have incuded advice on many-aviation medicine operationa matters. Since May 1995, he has been the U.K. Exchange Fight Surgeon at USAARL, where he runs the SD team. Captain Myron Amond Captain Myron Amond originay majored in eectrica engineering at the University of Arkansas and then served as a Nava officer between After eaving the Navy in 1974, he earned his master s degree in mechanica engineering and competed pre-medica work before returning to the Navy for medica schoo training at the Uniformed Services University of the Heath Sciences and received his doctor in medicine in He entered fight surgeon training at Pensacoa in 1983, and in 1988 became a speciaist in aerospace medicine. In 1994, he was transferred to the Nava Safety Center where he is presenty the head of the Aeromedica Division. Commander Rick Mason Commander Rick Mason was commissioned into the Medica Service Corps in 1982 and after receiving his wings, was designated as a Nava aerospace physioogist at the Nava Aerospace Medica Institute, Pensacoa. He has had a great dea of experience as an aerospace physioogist and aeromedica safety officer, and now hods the exuted post of Wing Aeromedica Safety Officer with the Third Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Forces Pacific at E Toro, Caifornia. His duties incude overseeing and managing the Wing s aeromedica safety programs and introducing new or modified aviation ife support equipment to aviation personne. His expertise in SD is particuary iustrated by the fact that he has served as an aircraft mishap board member for 5 mishaps that invoved SD and was the endorsing officer for 11 additiona SD mishap investigation reports. B-

102 Lieutenant Coone Jay Johnson Lieutenant Coone Jay Johnson is the Heicopter Fight Safety Officer at the Air Force Safety Center and is responsibe for a aspects of safety - prevention, mishap investigation, data anaysis, etc. He was commissioned into the Air Force in I973 and after fying fixed wing, he now has an exceent heicopter and aviator training background incuding neary 2000 hours on the H-3, mainy fying combat rescue. His previous appointments have incuded responsibiity for writing undergraduate piot syabus and, as Chief of Standardization and Training for combat heicopters, he coordinated a the cross-functiona heicopter issues incuding budgets, pans and programs, personne, maintenance, safety and operations. Lieutenant Coone Jeffrey Hi Lieutenant Coone Jeffrey Hi is an Air Force aerospace physioogist with 14 years experience. He has been invoved in testing and evauating various pieces of medica and ife support equipment, as we as running physioogica training for combat crews in many parts of the word. He is now the staff physioogist at the Air Force Specia Operations Command at Hurburt Fied, Forida. This is the office of prime responsibiity for the Air Force heicopter physioogica training. Captain Greg Thompson Captain Greg Thompson is Chief of the Fight Physioogy Branch at USASAM and responsibe for the training of a who pass through USASAM. During his distinguished service career, he has gained a baccaaureate in aeronautics and a masters in business administration, as we as being an experienced UH-, OH-58 and AH- piot. Squadron Leader Graeme Maidment Squadron Leader Graeme Maidment received his medica degree from the University of Oxford, Engand. He was commissioned into the Roya Air Force and after a year as Medica Officer at two Roya Air Force bases joined the speciaty of aviation medicine at the former RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine, Farnborough. During his time at Famborough, he gained expertise in the therma aspects of aviation medicine, particuary cod physioogy and surviva medicine. He hods the dipoma in aviation medicine, and was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of London for his thesis on Effects of Regiona Cooing on Therma Baance in Humans. He is currenty a senior speciaist in aviation medicine, and is working as an exchange officer to the United States Air Force at the Armstrong Laboratory at Brooks AFB in the Spatia Disorientation Counter-Measures Task Group. In addition to providing speciaist medica input, he is the principa investigator for the research conducted using the advanced spatia disorientation demonstrator. B-2

103 Captain Jonathan Cark Captain Jonathan Cark is a board certified neuroogist and aerospace medicine speciaist with over 20 years of miitary experience, and 9 years in operationa medicine and spatia orientation research. He received his doctor of medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Heath Sciences in 1980, and masters of pubic heath from the University of Aabama, Birmingham. He has had many interesting assignments. To name but two - He was a DOD space shutte support fight surgeon and covered the first aunch of Endeavor in and he was aso the first Head of the Aeromedica Department at the prestigious Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One, where he worked on spatia disorientation, night vision gogge human factors, and sustained fight operations. He is currenty the Head, Spatia Orientation Systems Department at the Nava Aerospace Medica Research Laboratory (NAMRL), Pensacoa, where he is aso the principa investigator on the Neuro-otoogic Assessment Program. Dr. Ani Raj Dr. Ani Raj is an assistant research professor for the Spatia Orientation Systems Department at NAMRL. After receiving his M.D. from the University of Michigan Schoo of Medicine in 1990, his interests in aerospace medicine research ed him to Pensacoa foowing a two year feowship as a Nationa Research Counci Resident Research Associate at the NASA-Johnson Space Center, Houston. His interests focus around the human physioogica and psychoogica responses to acceerative forces, particuary how changes in acceeration affect the sense of spatia orientation. Among his many tasks, he has been a driving force in the deveopment, test and evauation of vibrotactie vests to improve situationa awareness. Dr. Tamara Cheette Dr. Tamara Cheette is a biomedica engineer with the Combined Stress Branch of the Armstrong Laboratory at Wright Paterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio. In 1994, she received her Ph.D. in biomedica sciences from Wright State University and was seected as an associate feow of the Aerospace Medica Association. She conducts basic and appied research in the area of human spatia perception in the unusua environments found in highy maneuverabe aircraft, and aso teaches casses in vestibuar function and human performance in extreme environments. She has served as the principa investigator on severa major research projects on the dynamic environment simuator, a 9 G centrifuge and cosed oop simuator. B-3

104 Mr. Bi Ercoine Mr. Bi Ercoine is a retired Air Force ieutenant coone command piot with over 3,500 hours fight experience, incuding 2,000 instructor piot hours. He was a consutant for Air Force Mishap Investigation Boards of spatia disorientation aircraft accidents and has conducted extensive research into the history of instrument fight. He is currenty on contract to the Air Force at Brooks AFB, San Antonio, with Systems Research Laboratory where, among many tasks, he supports the Spatia Disorientation Countermeasures Task Group. His current work incudes studies of the visua, vestibuar, and auditory sensory systems and their interactions and reationships to fight. Specificay, his research deas with the design and appication of dispays and dispay symboogy to maintain spatia orientation in miitary aircraft; training methods to prevent the causes of SD; and a knowedge base to understand the physioogy of spatia orientation. B-4

105 Appendix C: Preprint: The British Army Air Corps in-fight SDdemonstration sortie by Macom G Braithwaite MB. ChB. DRCOG. DAv Med. DIH. MFOM Introduction Demonstration of some of the iusions of spatia disorientation (SD) and the imitations of the orientationa senses during ground-based training is a vita part of the proper education of aviators. Most student piots are given instruction during their fight training on how to overcome the effects of SD, but few air forces provide a specific SD demonstration sortie to reinforce the knowedge gained during ground-based training. There is a distinct difference between in-fight demonstration of SD, and training to overcome the probem once it has occurred. A demonstration of SD consists of reinforcement of the imitations of the orientation senses in fight and the enhancement of aircrew awareness to potentiay disorientating situations. SD training, on the other hand, consists of a series of fight procedures to cope with disorientating circumstances and iusions (e.g., recovery from unusua attitudes during instrument fying). SD training is ceary the responsibiity of the fight instructor in both simuator and actua fying sorties, whie the demonstration of physioogica imitations is best conducted by the fight surgeon piot who, having performed the ground-based training, is on-hand to expain the mechanics of SD. A specific British Army spatia disorientation sortie was deveoped and has been conducted since Athough the U.S. Air Force used to fy a simiar sortie, no other nations or service is known to currenty enhance the awareness of aircrew in their physioogica imitations in this way (3). The aim of the SD demonstration sortie is to reinforce, in a rea environment, the ground training received in SD and consequenty increase the awareness of trainee piots. The objective has been to provide aircrew with an initia SD demonstration sortie and a refresher every 4 years. This has been achieved in the main since it has become a mandatory requirement of aircrew continuation training. This paper describes the conduct of the sortie and discusses the operationa and cost benefits. Description of the SD demonstration sortie The sortie is fown by a piot-physician (fight surgeon) in the Gazee AH1 heicopter (SA 341). Three students can be fown on each sortie, one in the copiot s seat and two in the rear passenger seats. It can be competed in about 25 to 30 minutes fight time and so 12 students can receive the demonstration in 2 hours. The sortie was originay adapted from those described in Benson (1) and has since been modified from the description provided by Edgington and Box (5). Students typicay have had about 100 hours basic fixed wing and basic heicopter experience C-

106 and wi fy the sortie before they start rotary-wing instrument fight training. They wi have competed the cassroom aviation medicine and disorientation training a few weeks prior to the sortie. Genera reassurance is given that no vioent maneuvers wi be fown, and that ony one student wi have his or her eyes shut at any one time for no more than a minute or so. During each demonstration, the subject student gives a running commentary of his/her perception of orientation with particuar reference to pressure atitude, heading and airspeed. Primariy for fight safety reasons, the sortie is best fown in good visua meteoroogica conditions (VMC), but since it is difficut to competey prevent transmission of ight to the eyes, bright sunight is best avoided. In order to save time, the sortie is conducted cose to the base airfied, but an area of ow aviation activity is chosen for safety. The observing students are aso instructed to assist with aircraft ookout. During the transit to the exercise area, the use of the specia senses in orientation is ony briefy reviewed, as initia students have received cassroom instruction a few weeks prior to the sortie, and refresher students a ecture on the same day as the sortie. The overwheming contribution of vision to orientation is stressed together with the fact that SDis primariy a probem associated with poor externa visua conditions, thus emphasizing why the students wi be deprived of their vision during the exercises. The specific maneuvers have been chosen on the basis that they are simpe to perform are easiy repeatabe and have operationa reevance to the most commony experienced types and degrees of SD. At the commencement of each maneuver, the subject student is tod to sit free of the contros and airframe structures other than the seat, note the aircraft s initia fight parameters and then to cose his or her eyes and give a running commentary as described above. The other students are asked to observe but not comment unti after the maneuver. Each student experiences at east one exercise in each of the forward fight and hover groups. Forward fight Exercise 1 Straight and eve fight is estabished at 100 knots. After 10 seconds, a genty increasing (supra-threshod) ro to 30 ange of bank is commenced whie maintaining airspeed and pressure atitude. This is stabiized and, on competion of a 360 turn, the aircraft is roed wings eve again at a supra-threshod rate. The onset of the ro is normay detected, but as the semicircuar cana response decays, a fase sensation of a return to straight and eve fight is perceived. As the ro to eve fight is made, a sensation of turning in the opposite direction is perceived. The student is tod to open his or her eyes once he considers that he or she is again straight and eve. The observing students are asked to te the subject what actuay happened and a are asked for their comments. The fight surgeon wi then remind the students of the physioogy of semicircuar cana performance. c-2